Our SEO Is Better Than Your Better

Before we start, check out this new Nike commercial. Now that we are all on the same page, hopefully our headline makes a little more sense. A lot of companies out there claim to be “SEO Experts,” but many of them are just pulling a fast sell.

So how can you tell the difference? By knowing what SEO is and what it isn’t. Good SEO is strategy based implementation. Your provider should be a business partner and understand your long term goals. They need to know your company, your market and your vision. And most reputable SEO firms, like good lawyers or ad agencies, work on retainers. They don’t just give you content and vanish like Keyser Soze.

Allow us to download a few warning signs of a bad SEO company for you.

Any provider that guarantees you a certain ranking on Google should be avoided like the plague. If Two Guys, a Girl and aComputer Placepromise you a #1 search result ranking, the question to ask is for what keyword. No one searches for “nickel plated liter boxes”, so a number one ranking there gets you a goose egg in terms of new business.

A second red flag is a search engine submission fee. If you hire a company to do SEO, search engine submission should be a basic component of the deal. Paying them an additional fee to submit your site would be like paying a barber to cut your hair, and then paying a usage fee on the scissors. It’s a tool of the trade. It should come standard.

Fees for link exchanges are another area of concern. Building quality links for your site takes time and planning, which you already pay for. There shouldn’t be an extra charge for them to hook your site up with some sketchy link farm.

All these “services” are things you could pay your wife’s sister’s kid $30 buck to do. There is no skill involved. What a true SEO provider brings is knowledge and ability.

SEO isn’t simply ranking for keywords, it is researching your market and choosing which words to rank for. It’s not writing your page for a machine, but creating a site that is easily read and understood by users and search engines. It isn’t pumping out articles just to see your Google rank rise, but being part of a marketing campaign that sees your revenue rise and your business grow.

Hiring an SEO firm is just like any other business decision. It is a relationship. It reflects on your reputation. It is an important decision that should be made based on research and referrals, not on cheap tricks and empty promises.

So before you hire a company, ask yourself if their SEO smells like French toast.

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