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.