How to Choose a Good Quality SEO Firm

You’re probably not the only one on the web trying to figure out how to hire a Good SEO Firm. SEO engineering is a mystery to many. I will say you can’t get it for $100 a month though. That’s a bunch of hookahs. Here are some good tips. I have seen some SEO firms around for years and they are a partner in a prominent web hosting service. People have asked, “Are they a quality SEO marketing firm?” I have wondered as well if they are quality. It seems legit since they are on a prominent hosting site’s partner page. I would think a lot of people would scream and shout if their work was really bad and produced poor results.

One of the best ways to measure a firm’s quality is to check its previous client results. That’s what you’re paying for in the end strong, high-ranking search results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing(MSN) for your keywords. I will say that you should look around a few places for reviews. Of course, we are an SEO firm offering SEO services. I’ll stop there so as not to push too hard and be accused of commercializing. This is for your education on how to choose a good firm and what to look for in SEO services offered by reputable Internet companies.

Here are some basic search engine ranking elements you should look for in a quality search engine optimization company or Internet marketing firm proposal: They should use ‘White Hat’ SEO On-Page and Off-Page optimization tools and techniques. Many Internet marketers could benefit from some basic ‘white hat’ SEO information.

What does ‘white hat’ mean? Are they cowboys with clean clothes? No, this means that they are actively using ‘best practice’ techniques that SEO friendly to Google’s algorithms. By the way, it generally won’t say white hat openly.

What’s a search engine algorithm? It’s the computer code in web spiders that crawl all over the Internet deciding which 10 websites are more relevant to a user’s specific search out of the millions of websites on the Internet.

I will not reveal everything as some techniques take years to learn and are proprietary to our company. However, these basic white hat SEO techniques should be in the Internet marketing services they offer to you:

On-Page SEO techniques that cause good “organic” SEO rankings are:

o Keyword Research Analysis
o Website HTML Meta-Tags: Title, Description, Keywords
o Optimizing Internal Website Links
o Making Images be SEO friendly
o SEO Content and Text upgrades
o Google XML sitemap
o No Flash or sloppy Javascript code

Off-Page SEO techniques for your website that cause higher search engine rankings:

o Increase of Relevant Inbound Links
o Reciprocal – relevant exchange links
o One Way – inbound links to homepage
o Blog/Article Postings – keyword-relevant content
o High Ranking Directory Submissions
o Social Bookmarking – Twitter, Facebook. LinkedIn
o An SEO analysis report comparing your site with 1-2 competitors of your choice Monthly Reports:
o Web Traffic source tracking
o Google Ranking Progress
o Inbound Links Created

If they at least offer these SEO services and give you easy-to-read monthly reports, you will probably be in good shape. Ask for a sample report. This way you can see how data will be reported to you and you’ll know what to expect.

IMPORTANT: SEO marketing is not a flip of a switch. It can take a few months and sometimes up to a year to see 1st-page rankings in highly competitive keywords such as “real estate” and “mortgages”. However, you should see some improvement within a couple of months with a continuous climb upwards.

Be smart, get a couple of real bids from accredited SEO marketing firms and they should be comparable. If the price is way off, look at what each company offers. Do you get to talk to someone on the phone? Are they going to answer questions? Is it more of a hands-off type of service where they do the work in the background and only send you reports?

That’s ok. Just make sure that it works for your type of personality. Some SEO firms only do external link building and never touch your website. This will almost never have you dominating your competitors in the search engines. Some SEO firms will offer a free SEO analysis of your website. Take it, but realize it may be very limited compared to an analysis for $200-500. For a small investment, you can have an SEO consultant talk you through the SEO