What should you consider while hiring a SEO service provider?

Search engine optimization is over a billion dollar industry and has occupied a prominent position on every Web marketer’s check list. The competition on the world wide web for any category of business now ranges from thousands to over millions of sites and it is imperative to reach mass audiences by featuring on top search rankings for every targeted keywords.

To those who are new on the internet marketing scene: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) explained in layman’s term means improving the ranking of your website on search engine browsers like Google, Yahoo, Ask, AOL etc through various SEO strategies. Example, you have an e-commerce website selling various handicrafts and specialized artifacts. What your SEO agency will do is it will first get your preferred keywords list and then use a combination of tricks and tips to elevate your site to top rankings of major search engines. This should significantly help to increase your Web traffic and give you an edge over your competitors.

As this is based more on smart strategies rather than any book knowledge, one should always depend on dedicated SEO service provider to get better and effective results. Also, this requires constant involvement and a check over the latest updates too.
Here’s your checklist prior to hiring a SEO service provider:

• Your SEO provider’s own site should be in top ranks for its preferred keywords (what use if they themselves do not have a successful SEO?)
  
• Don’t fall for false promises like ‘we can get your company in top 10 ranks in 30 days’ or ‘guaranteed results in one week’ as this is an organic exercise and takes some time. Also don’t forget that even though your vendor might be using any Black Hat strategies to make you happy within a short time, it’s your site that will get screwed up if found by the search engines.
• Know exactly what you are getting for the money you spend, ask for detailed step by step process and regular reports.
• In case you have doubts on any of the tactics adopted, clarify immediately and if not satisfied or you feel it will harm your business, walk away and hire someone else.
• If your SEO advises that you should use an automatic content generator it is time to walk away. Search engine rankings often depend upon well written and unique content, without this it will be hard to improve rankings.
• Study the link building strategy adopted by the SEO provider. Don’t let spammed links simply pile up on your link web-page.

Before I close here, here’s one serious advise in general. Please do not get impatient if your SEO service provider is not able to bring you on top rankings for all the keywords. Because if any of your targeted keywords are from the high-value keywords, the competition would be too stiff ranging to millions of sites too. So instead you can allow those high-value keywords to be targeted geographically as would significantly reduce the competition. You can also consider Pay-per-click campaign simultaneously along with the SEO for high-value keywords.