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Search Engine Optimization requires case by case research and understanding.  Be wary of a firm that makes promises period, especially before thoroughly gauging your unique situation.  Every case requires different methods, a different amount of time and effort to achieve results, and a different amount of money.

First of all, ranking isn’t everything.  You need to appear credible enough to actually drive traffic to your site, but even that isn’t the ultimate goal.

If an SEO firm isn’t putting money in your cash register their efforts are worthless.  Their mission should be to make you fabulously wealthy, not make you Google’s top listing.

However, there is an important value to ranking, separate from actual sales and conversions–branding credibility.  Many firms tout Pay-Per-Click links, but these days the mere fact you’re paying to be sponsored makes you suspect.  The prospective customers you’re trying to reach do not want to be *sold to*. All your prospect knows about you if they see your company in the pay per click section of a Google page is that your company has deep enough pockets to be #1 for that spot.

Being #1 in the organic search listings carries with it the impression that Google specifically singled out one company as being more important than the others.

Unethical businesses such as Enron and AIG have consumers on red alert against any form of advertising, and people tend to believe a business worth their salt doesn’t need to pay to bring in business.  Word of mouth and reputation should be enough.  Therefore, wary eyes tend to avoid the right-hand side sponsored links on Google and favor the centralized organic links.  And these days, when Social Media Optimization (SMO) is just as important as SEO, getting your company Facebook and Twitter pages to rank next to your main link can translate to big money in your pocket.

But this doesn’t mean your firm should never buy ads.  Ranking in one part of Google helps you rank in another, and consider that Google Places are the only results that show up on a Smartphone these days.  Every situation requires it’s own special SEO recipe for success, and in some cases throwing customers a bone by carefully selecting a link to purchase is wise if not essential.  Once your firm decides on a plan of action, however, make sure they switch their focus to timing and testing.

Intelligently timing the release of new links and updates to your site(s) over the course of weeks or months is crucial to maintaining success.  And of course, be sure to ask about methods used to test and measure results.  How can your Search Engine Optimization be optimized if your web site statistics aren’t being closely monitored?  Customers give immediate feedback whenever a change is made to your site, so make certain your stats are getting the attention they deserve.

In addition to integrity in personalized service, your SEO firm should be committed to ethics in customer loyalty.  Think of SEO as public relations.

Not only should they be responsible for boosting your ranking and sales, they should offer to take on fielding any and all complaints and publicity related to your SEO.  Let’s say you’re a criminal lawyer; would you want your publicist representing one of your competitors as well?  No way.  Your SEO firm has no business taking on more than one client of the same genre in the same general area. Make sure you are their one and only “criminal lawyer from Rockville, MD” or “financial analyst from Northern Virginia”.  If their goal is to make you “number one” in your niche, how can they have the same goal for someone else?  The best firm will openly claim you sacrosanct, forsaking all competitors.

Finally, make sure the firm you hire is not afraid to tell you something you don’t want to hear. They’re the experts, and this means sometimes talking back.  In the world of SEO, the customer is not always right if that customer wants the best results possible.  You may want to rank for “x”, and it may seem obvious what your keywords should be to achieve this ranking, but your SEO firm has tools such as Google AdWords and battle-tested methods which may lead to different conclusions.

The simplest example of this is “plurals”.  When a customer is searching for an attorney, they want to choose from a pool of them rather than zeroing in on one right away.  Therefore, they’re more likely to type the plural “attorneys” into the search field.  This tiny change in keyword from singular to plural has the potential to knock your sales out of the park.  Make sure you choose SEO experts who have the confidence to tell YOU what you want.

by Joyce Kelly SEO copywriter for CWP Tech Solutions

An effective SEO consultant is like a sport fisherman guide:

You tell me what kind of fish you want to catch; I take you to the part of the pond where those fish are…better yet, I take you to the part of the pond where those fish are AND we’re the only ones fishing that sweet spot. Once we’re at that part of the pond… we change the bait, and keep on changing the bait till the fish tell us what they like chomping on

There are 2 and only 2 reasons a company website makes puts money in the cash register or fails to make money:

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Tagged as: local google advertising, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO Consultant, social media consultant, Social Media Marketing