Five Tips to Ensure Your Search Engine Optimization Firm isn’T Scamming You.

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Every day I get at least a dozen emails from companies promising to help me increase my business on the Internet through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but are they legit? Google takes a moment to post warnings to users about these businesses.

Here are a few things to consider next time you’re approached by a SEO company:

Nobody has a special relationship with Google except you.
There’s only one way to submit a web site to Google and it’s free. You can do it yourself and you’ll have the same chance of being indexed as a specialist.

Find our what they plan to do.
The only thing worse than not being listed on Google is being banned from Google. There are no secrets in SEO work, it’s all just about time and energy so if your consultant won’t tell you what they’re up to, chances are that Google won’t like it.

Know the rules.
Link farms, purchased links, cloaking. These are practices that will get you kicked off the worlds most popular web site in a heart beat. There are good SEO outfits and bad SEO outfits, make sure that you’re depending on somebody with a good reputation.

Know their reputation.
What makes for a good reputation? Google PageRanks. If you want to know how much Google thinks of a potential SEO company, just type their URL into the PageRank checker and get a score from 0 to 10. The higher the score, the better their standing on the Internet. Of course, this doesn’t mean they’re legitimate but it does mean they can do what they claim.

Follow the money.
Ask to see statements for where the SEO specialist is spending your money. The cool thing about the Internet is this data is available in real time, so you should be able to see it.

So then, what does a Search Engine Optimization firm do for their money? SEO work is all about optimizing your blog content, or improving existing materials, fixing common mistakes and conforming to standards. It’s about taking advantage of trends and following the rules. In short, proper SEO is about quality content, popularity and pose.

Comments or questions? Let me know, I love to hear from people.

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