Make SEO Services Work For Your Small Business With This 5-Step Guideline

It is a given in today's marketing world that search engine optimization is of utmost importance for a business; the online audience is just too vast to ignore. SEO services are becoming a popular option for small businesses to tap into their online target audience. Search engine optimization is the most effective way to promote your business online if you are a small business owner. Once your website attains a good ranking in major search engines, you will be able to get exposure for your business to the millions of people who surf the web everyday and are looking for your products and services. The following is a 5-step guideline to make sure that SEO services work successfully for your business.

1. Assess your Situation

The first and foremost step for you should be to know where you stand in your search engine optimization campaign. What is your website's ranking for your main keywords? Is it user-friendly? Is the navigation easy enough? Does your content need a re-vamp so that major keywords are covered? What about on-site and offsite website optimization? If you are already using a SEO company, you can have detailed discussions about your questions with it. When you know the answers to these questions, it will become easier to utilize SEO services to your advantage or make the necessary changes accordingly.

2. Plan for SEO Services

You will not be able to determine which SEO services are required for your small business if you don't plan your search engine optimization campaign properly. You need to have a vision of what you want to achieve through the SEO services you use. This SEO planning also includes figuring out what kind of audience you want to tap into and the online mediums through which you can make a good impression on them. For example, if you are planning to target women entrepreneurs, you can develop a blog or forum which concentrates on issues related to them as part of the SEO services you avail of. This will give you a strong medium to interact with potential clients.

3. Look for Resources

In addition to SEO services, additional resources can also help in a search engine optimization campaign. Search for additional resources from around you like a content specialist who can help you maintain qualitative content on your website or a web designer who can help you improve the navigation of your website, if required. An SEO company may also offer content writing services which will help you change the content of your website or maintain blogs and forums. Although these are not included in basic SEO services, they are add-ons that help boost the visibility of your website.

4. Promotion

Don't forget to promote your website whenever possible. As such, your SEO company will take care of online promotion of your website. Ask the SEO company concerned whether link building and blogs are included in the SEO services you are signing up for. As a business owner, you can also promote your website in all your communications like emails, business cards and stationery, so that at least the people you come in contact with know about it and can access it with ease.

5. Evaluate the Results

There are various tools and softwares available today, which will help you analyze the results of the SEO services you have used. At this stage, you can see the result of all the search engine optimization activities undertaken by your SEO company. You can also change strategies after seeing the SEO result in case you feel a change will be better for future SEO activities.

Search engine optimization is not as complicated a procedure as you would think in the first instance. Taking the help of an experienced SEO company and signing up for the right SEO services will give your small business the advantage it needs to get the attention of your online target audience.

5 Questions About SEO Services To Ask Potential SEO Consultants

Due to the huge popularity of search engine optimization, numerous so-called expert SEO consultants have cropped up offering "unbelievable discounts" and "guaranteed rankings" to anyone who cares to listen. If you are looking for a SEO service company for your business website, you need to sort through a lot of companies to find the SEO consultant suitable to your requirements. We have come up with 5 questions you can ask a potential SEO service company, the answers to which will give you an inkling to their expertise.

Ask the potential SEO consultant the following 5 questions:

1. Can you guarantee No. 1 ranking?

Contrary to what you expect, an ideal SEO consultant should give you a negative answer. No one in the search engine optimization industry can EVER guarantee no. 1 ranking, and that includes major search engines like Google and Yahoo. Organic search results are natural and cannot be influenced by any SEO services company, no matter how experienced it is. Hence be very wary about SEO consultants offering guaranteed No. 1 rankings and run in the opposite direction if you meet one!

2. Does my website need to be changed?

The answer you are looking for here is "Yes". Organic SEO consists of two factors: onsite and offsite techniques. Both strategies are equally important and experienced companies providing SEO services use both to hike rankings. Certain inexperienced SEO consultants only offer "link submissions" or "directory posting" services, which completely ignore the importance of onsite optimization of web pages. Your website's content, its ease of navigation, back end coding etc. is very important in deciding the rank your website attains on search engines. Your SEO consultant should be interested in changing your website at least at the back end, in case radical changes are not required. If the company providing SEO services doesn't look at your website, consider someone else for the job.

3. Do your SEO services involve use of any software?

There are many softwares available today which aid in search engine optimization of a website. Nothing, however, beats an expert's hand at SEO. An experienced SEO consultant should, therefore tell you that he/she uses softwares sometimes, but most of the work is done by hand. SEO softwares can be used by novices in the search engine optimization; you don't need a SEO consultant or a SEO services company to make use of it.

4. Will you be able to prove the results you achieve?

An experienced SEO consultant should be able to justify his/her search engine optimization work by providing results you can evaluate your website's progress with. Your website should not only have more visitors than before, it should have more relevant visitors, who are likely to be converted into clients. The rate of conversion of website visitors to clients should be on the rise after you hire a SEO service company.

5. Will you use any Black Hat techniques to boost my rankings immediately?

Here, of course, should be an emphatic "absolutely not". Black Hat SEO techniques should be a complete no-no to a genuine SEO consultant. If it's a shady SEO services company you are dealing with, he/she will probably try to talk you into the "quick boost in rankings" or "No. 1 position within a week" idea as soon as you mention Black Hat SEO. Sure, it will boost your ranking for the time being; but it will also guarantee that your website will be blacklisted by major search engines very soon. Your SEO services should include only White Hat SEO techniques, which may take some time to be effective, but will give long term results which will be permanent. Make this very clear to your SEO consultant before you hire him/her.