Most businesses are now realising the need to be top of the search engines, and many now realise that search engine optimisation (SEO) is how to do it. But when it comes to choosing the right SEO company or service to optimise your site, many business struggle with what to look for.
For this reason, we’ve put together a bit of a guide to assist business owners and web managers deciding which SEO program is right for them.
Reporting
The first major pitfall for businesses to avoid is signing up to an SEO program that doesn’t provide adaquate reporting. This may sound obvious but there are plenty of dodgy SEO guys out there who’s reporting is an email saying “It’s going great!”
Make sure you find an SEO company that actually sends a report detailing where you rank in Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc for the keywords they have agreed to optimise. This is so you can see that in this month we went from page 3 to page 1, etc for each keyword.
Number of Keywords
The next thing to look for is the number of keywords or keyword phrases that will be optimised. SEO programs can range anywhere from 2 keywords to 150. Obviously the more keywords the better, but there’s no point an SEO firm claiming they optimise 150 keywords if you don’t get a report showing where you rank for these terms. It’s easy to say but harder to do.
I have personally seen SEO programs that cost business owners $2000 a month for 10 keyword phrases. This sort of thing is grossly overpriced.
Guarantees
If there’s one phrase that gets thrown about a lot in the SEO game it’s “no one can guarantee you top spot in Google.” While this is true to a certain extent, you still should make sure that your SEO program comes with some kind of guarantee.
If an SEO company only optimises 1 keyword phrase then they couldn’t possibly guarantee you top spot for just that one phrase. There’s too many other factors beyond their control.
However, for a company that optimises 25 keywords, they should be able to guarantee a certain amount of these on the first page. Any company that is not offering some kind of guarantee is not even sure enough of their own ability to perform quality SEO.
No guarantee means the SEO firm is not confident of their own ability.
Setup Costs
The other big thing to look out for is setup costs. Many SEO programs start with a $2000 or so setup cost plus an on-going monthly cost. When working out the overall cost, always budget for a 12 month commitment.
Even if the company says you can leave at any time, don’t pay the up front cost, 1 or 2 months then leave. Always plan for 12 months. SEO is one of those things that doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, and realise that starting now will yield results in 9-12 months time.
If possible, it’s best to find programs that don’t have any setup fees at all.
The Final Word
So the basic piece of advice here is to make sure your SEO firm is accountable.
Reload Media offers three SEO programs and a brief summary of these programs are shown below. For more on these programs, click here: SEO services.
Use this table as a starting point to do your comparison shopping of SEO programs:
| Program | SEO Local | SEO Silver | SEO Gold | SEO Platinum |
| Number of Keywords Optimised | 10 | 25 | 75 | 150 |
| Number of ‘Top 10′ (first page) Rankings GUARANTEED | 2 | 10 | 40 | 120 |
| Search Engine Ranks Reported on for Each Keyword? | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly | Monthly |
| Setup Costs | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Monthly On-going Costs (excluding GST, 12 month contract) | $250 | $490 | $890 | $1,690 |
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Yeah, it’s true the people those who want to do SEO process are innumerably increasing. So try out and do all the techniques, definitely your site will be a winner.
SEO and other campaigns online can be quite difficult and you may need the services of SEO firms. When you look for one, dont just look at the price but at their capabilities as well.
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Good article. I think that PPC has to be blended into an overall marketing strategy. A successful pay-per-click campaign is about using the right combination of keywords, ads, and landing pages, and boy is this more important than ever right now. Firms are very careful now about spend on marketing and this is showing in the marketplace with firms shopping around for effective online marketing solutions.
Performance-based Search Engine Marketing is what its all about these days. Firms are much more sensitive to spend, so campaigns have to be performing, and that includes landing pages.
A mere online presence won’t serve the purpose of reaching out and impressing your target audience, to beat the competition you need a well designed website with a good search rank and for that you need help of companies which provide complete solutions in website designing and development and search engine optimization.
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