If you’re in the market to hire a search engine
optimization company, you probably feel bombarded with promises of #1 rankings
and instant success. But how do you know which claims are important and which to
believe, and which are classic snake oil pitches?
1. Cost
Get prepared, because search engine optimization
work is very expensive. And with few exceptions, you get what you pay for in
this business. If you find an SEO company that’s cheap and whose Web site
resembles a used car lot, trust that you’re not going to get quality work.
How much should you be prepared to pay? That’s a
difficult question, because it depends on many factors. First, if you’re going
after highly competitive keyword phrases, you may have to pay more than if your
keyword phrases are focused and finetuned. If your site is enormous, and if you
want each page optimized, the cost will be more. If you want to set up new sites
to bring in traffic, that’s a different charge. Or, if your site is using
difficult technology, the cost may be higher.
Some SEO firms now offer a pay-for-placement plan,
where each keyword has its own price category, depending on the number of search
results and degree of competition. Still other companies offer a
pay-for-click-through plan.
Another consideration is that most SEO’s require a
portion of the fee to be paid in advance. It might be 50 percent, or in some
cases, 100 percent of the initial fee.
In any event, unless you’re simply wanting to hire
a consultant for an hour or two, be prepared to spend at least a thousand or two
in getting your site optimized by an expert.
2. Understand what You’re Getting for the Price
Most SEO companies offer various packages that
include certain services, and you can choose to add on additional services from
there.
So, find out exactly what is included in the
package price. Does this include submitting through the pay inclusion programs?
Which engines and directories are included? How many information or doorway
pages will be created? Does this include maintaining the site after results are
achieved? How many keyword phrases do they work with? Does the cost include
building link popularity?
If you have a brand new site and are wanting
“instant” traffic, you may want to go with a firm that will purchase keywords
for you through one of the pay engines like GoTo. You’ll also want to make sure
that the SEO firm submits your pages through the various engines’ pay inclusion
programs.
Yes, these are added costs to you. But, it can take
literally months to see results through regular search engine optimization
strategies. If you have a brand new site with no traffic, or if you’re anxious
to get traffic going for a special promotion or holiday sales, purchasing
keywords through the pay engines and paying to submit to the engines will boost
your site’s visibility much faster.
3. Guarantees
If the SEO firm you’re considering has a guarantee,
study that guarantee and all of the “fine print” carefully. If they’re
guaranteeing to increase the traffic to your site, that’s fine. If they’re
guaranteeing an increase in your rankings, that’s fine too.
But, if they’re guaranteeing that you’ll get a top
10 ranking, consider this guarantee carefully. There are so many factors that
come into play when optimizing a Web site. For example, how established is the
site, or is it brand new? How competitive is in the industry?
Does the guarantee require that you choose a
three-word keyword phrase, under the assumption that it’s impossible to get a
two-word phrase ranked high, or even a single keyword? For one thing, that
assumption is incorrect. Depending on the keyword phrase itself, you can
certainly get two-word phrases ranked high, and even certain single keywords.
So, if you go with that firm, you’re going to have to choose keywords that are
less popular than what you might have chosen otherwise.
Some firms require you to sign a form stating that
there are no guarantees for top ten rankings, which keeps misunderstandings down
from the onset of the working relationship.
Here’s what one SEO explains when customers ask him
about a guarantee:
“I make an analogy about search engine
placement in order to illustrate what it is like and why it cannot be
guaranteed. Obtaining high rankings is comparable to predicting the weather. You
can look at the clouds, you can check humidity, you can watch wind patterns,
etc. These are absolutely necessary to do in order to have any idea about the
weather, but you still can't say for sure that it will in fact rain. I can do
page tweaking, submissions, link promotion, etc., and have fantastic results and
be right on the money, or it can rain on me. Doing what I do is a necessity to
have a decent chance at obtaining search positions, but I cannot promise how the
rankings will perform.”
4. Competing Clients
Some SEO firms will only work for one client in a
given industry. For example, they will only work for one life insurance client,
one furniture wholesaler, one bank, and so forth.
Why? Because they don’t want their clients
competing against each other for the same keywords.
Other SEO firms set themselves up to be experts in
a particular industry, such as online casinos or legal Web sites.
Still other firms will take on more than one client
in a given industry, but only if each client has a different set of targeted
keywords.
If this is important to you, check with the SEO
firm you’re considering and see how they handle competing clients.
5. Track Record
How can the professional SEO company prove to you
that they knowledgeable and experienced in this industry?
For one thing, you can ask for a list of references
from any SEO that you’re considering. Look closely at the list to see if the
sites appear to be legitimate and trustworthy. Then, contact those references.
Does the firm hold certification from a reliable
training company like the Search Engine Academy or the Academy of Web Specialists? How many years of
experience does the company have? Is the company willing to show you a few
reports for some of their clients?
6. Access to Your Server
How will the SEO firm work on your site? Are you
going to give them access to your server, to where they’re responsible for
uploading pages and making changes?
Or, will they have to go through a Webmaster,
thereby slowing down the process.
Some SEO companies like to set up gateway pages on
their own server and route traffic to your site. Other SEO firms like to set up
separate Web sites on their own server as a means of building link popularity
and routing traffic. If that’s the case, who will own those gateway pages or
sites if you decide not to continue using their services?
When the SEO firm owns the pages or sites, if you
take your SEO work elsewhere, that firm can simply re-route traffic to another
client’s site. There’s nothing illegal or shady about this—it’s just a fact of
life. However, you can always choose to negotiate ownership of a gateway page or
site in the initial contract.
7. Site Quality
Professional search engine optimizers understand
that getting top rankings in the search engines is only the beginning. In order
to be successful, those top rankings have to convert to additional traffic to
the site, and ultimately to traffic that converts to sales.
But what if the SEO achieves top results for you,
yet your site isn’t designed in such a way to promote the actual sale. For
example, let’s say that the site is confusing, and visitors simply give up and
never make it to the order page. Or maybe there’s no “call to action.”
Some SEO’s are beginning to make stipulations in
the contract that state that they are not responsible for actually increasing
sales unless they take on the responsibility of redesigning some areas of the
site to make them more “sales friendly.”
8. Finding a Trustworthy SEO Firm
How can you find a professional SEO company that
you can trust? Wouldn’t all of the best firms be listed in the top rankings at
the search engines?
Not necessarily, and here’s why. Many of the
successful SEO firms are so busy working on clients’ sites that they don’t have
time to optimize their own sites. So, they rely on word of mouth and
recommendations for their new clients, which keeps them more than adequately
busy.
Plus, the firm may be in the top rankings for the
keywords that they consider important to them, but you may be looking in
different areas that they aren’t targeting.
So, just because a company isn’t in the top 10
doesn’t mean that they aren’t a top notch firm with the experience needed to
help your site achieve success.
Back to our original question of how to find a
trustworthy company, ask other Webmasters whom they use to optimize their site.
Search for related online forums or visit newsgroups and see which firms are
recommended. Write to some SEO companies and see what type of response you get.
Do your homework before choosing the firm, and you stand a much greater chance
of choosing an SEO company who can really help you.
9. Type of Proposal
Many SEO companies will create a detailed report
and offer numerous suggestions before you ever sign the contract. Some of these
companies charge for the proposal, and others don’t. Still others will charge
only if you decide not to use their services.
Taking it from the side of the optimizer, it’s very
time consuming coming up with a strategy for a particular company. Not only do
you have to visit the site and spend some time, but you also have to run various
reports and do considerable research. Plus, many SEO’s are hesitant to give away
too much information in the initial proposal, so they won’t do detailed reports
or offer focused suggestions until an official agreement has been reached.
In any event, make sure that you understand the
process that’s involved. For example:
- Do you have to pay for a formal proposal?
- If you hire the company, how often will you be
sent verifiable results?
- What types of reports can you expect to receive?
- How long will the process take?
- When can you expect to see results?
10. Contract
As with all contractual obligations, read the
contract carefully, including all fine print. At the Academy of Web Specialists,
we compiled a group of contracts from various SEO firms, and we’ve posted them
online. We also came up with a standard contract that incorporates many of the
ideas shown in the individual contracts. It might help you to view those contracts and
compare what the SEO company you’re considering is offering.
This work is licensed
Under a Creative Commons License
Let’s look at ten important items that you need to
think about if you’re considering hiring a professional
search engine optimization firm.
