If your business has an online presence, it needs search engine optimization. Without SEO efforts on your part, your website will be lost in a sea of Google search results. With SEO, the organic visitors to your website can skyrocket, leading to more sales and more profit.
But many business owners do not have the time or resources to successfully manage their own SEO. Turning to an SEO company or consultant is a beneficial move. SEO professionals have the experience, knowledge, and expertise that business owners need. However, a major SEO company could make many promises they can’t keep. How can you be sure that your SEO consultant is using your money wisely?
Before signing on with an SEO company, ask them these simple questions:
- Expertise – Do your SEO consultants have experience in SEO? Although knowledge of SEO practices can be found pretty much all over the Internet, SEO is more than just inserting a few Meta tags. Consultants with real experience and success know techniques unique to your needs and business. Though there’s nothing wrong with hiring entry level positions so that new workers can learn SEO expertise, there is something wrong with promising that an expert will manage your account and then not delivering.
- Blog Posts – Is blog post creation done in-house or do you outsource them to a freelancer? How much time is put into each blog post? Many SEO companies will have in-house writers that they are happy to show off, but also supplement those writers with freelancers that are paid cents per word. With that kind of incredibly low income, freelance writers must churn out as much content as fast as they can just to ensure that they’ve made minimum wage. Some SEO companies even push their in-house writers to write low quality work quickly. Not only are they wasting your money on near useless articles, but the writing they deliver could cause you to be penalized by Google – Google values rich, high-quality content.
An SEO company that uses some of these practices is still technically “white hat,” a term that refers to SEO practices that are ethical and generally condoned. Google doesn’t penalize websites that use these methods; however, SEO companies that say they have expert consultants and in-house writers but really don’t are making false promises and wasting your money. Make sure to ask these two questions before signing on with any SEO company.