SEO is quickly the hottest trend in internet marketing. Businesses of all sizes are starting to understand that dedicating a budget to a website is useless, if you're not going to get traffic and business from it. The single largest source of web traffic is search, and your website needs to be ranked highly enough to be able to attract a searcher's view and click. To increase your ranking, you need SEO.
There are two major flaws with SEO, which can result in a companies' funds being wasted on poor or fake SEO services. Understanding these flaws will empower you to choose a legitimate SEO company.
Flaw #1: "Yeah sure, we can do SEO..."
Not surprisingly, businesses will often first turn to the agency that developed their website, and ask for SEO. Rather than refer them to a proper SEO company, the agency sees only a lucrative cross-sell opportunity, and make the claim that they can indeed offer SEO on the site they’ve built for an additional cost.
However, in most cases the SEO knowledge of any web design agency is minimal at best. Perhaps they've used directory submissions, maybe even done some keyword research. But how much in-depth knowledge do they possess regarding the many factors of on-page & on-site optimization? Do they understand the varying importance of different incoming links, or do they simply use Google PageRank as the primary indicator of link value?
Unless the agency has a dedicated SEO specialist or department, you can bet on receiving a low quality service, which may even be detrimental to your site's ranking over time! To illustrate: would you use your interior decorator to install your granite counters? No! Even if they specify a color/style of granite as part of the overall design project, you would still want to find a specialist (e.g. a granite installation expert) to perform such a specialized job. That's the only way to ensure that you'll be getting the best results for your investment.
Issue #2: Results take time Search engines do not reward SEO efforts instantly. It will usually take several months for on-site optimization and link building to increase your ranking, and even upwards of six months to rank on the first page for somewhat competitive keyword phrases. Due to this lag time, you won't know if your SEO company is really doing quality work for the first few months! Here's a true story:
I was recently talking with a business owner who has invested 6 months in SEO. The outcome was quite sad. The SEO company had not really looked at the client's website, or provided even one recommendation for on-site optimization. Rather, they added a few keyword-stuffed 'doorway' pages, which are actually frowned upon by search engines. They had used an automated tool to place links on a number of completely irrelevant, low quality sites and pages. The links were so poor and obviously keyword-stuffed, that Google did not acknowledge even one of the links!
The SEO company had promised to increase their ranking for 20 different phrases. This resulted in a spreading thin of link building efforts, and they delivered not even one first-page result - not even for easy local terms!
So, this client has learned [the hard way] the difference between fake and real SEO services. In a following article, I'll explain how you can 'interview' an SEO company, to identify a quality service provider before wasting your money. In the meantime, check out Toronto SEO by ConvUrgency - we're an ethical SEO company that provides search engine optimization to businesses of all sizes.
Beware of Fake SEO Companies! - To learn more about this author, visit Justin Cook's Website.
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