Ten Considerations When Hiring a
Search Engine Optimization Company
Part 1

By Robin Nobles


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?

Let's look at ten important items that you need to think about if
you're considering hiring a professional search engine
optimization firm.

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.

(Continued in Part 2)

This article was written by Robin Nobles, a professional
freelance writer and the Director of Training at the Academy of
Web Specialists (http://www.academywebspecialists.com). Over the
past few years, she has trained several thousand people in her
online and onsite courses in search engine positioning strategies
and has written three books that can be ordered through Amazon.
Visit the Academy's training Web site to learn more about their
online courses: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com.