You now have an awesome website designed and launched on the Internet. You search for your company or organization’s name…and there it is! Waiting to be clicked on! But…how are potential customers or users supposed to find you unless they actually use your company, organization, or website’s name? There are currently over one billion websites on the World Wide Web…and counting.
So…how is your phenomenal, one-of-kind website ever going to be found?
The answer is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), a term and strategy that has been in use for more than twenty years – even before Google came into being. For the first ten years or so, getting your website listed high in the rankings on the search engines was “easy”, that is, if you “cheated” and followed the black hat techniques of keyword stuffing and collecting, trading, or buying links.
However, as technology has progressed, so has Google’s. They were and are now able to increase their algorithms’ capabilities of targeting sites and penalizing them by either pushing them way down in the rankings or removing them from their index altogether.
And that is NOT good since NO ONE will ever be able to discover your website.
As Google continues to refine their algorithms, ranking your website’s SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) organically, that is, without paying for an ad, has become increasingly more difficult. But the good news is that it is not impossible if you understand SEO and how to implement a strategy that will result in your website being found for your keywords on page one of the results.
Can I do this on my own?
If you are confident that you know the complexities of search engine optimization and have the time to take away from your business to spend hours and hours each month to implement them, then, yes, you can. But if you don’t…your best option is to search for an SEO company who can.
What is the best way for you to go about finding a reputable SEO company that can successfully increase your SERP?
The best answer is to know what questions to ask when you are searching for such a company to hire.
The Top Ten Questions to Ask Are:
- Do you have a strategy or process of approaching SEO in place that will deliver results?
- Are you able to adapt that strategy to our specific niche of business, industry, or brand?
- Do you conduct keyword research?
- Does your strategy include on-site, off-site, and technical SEO?
- Does your strategy include content marketing and onsite blogging?
- Do you observe the search engines’ webmaster guidelines?
- Do you use various tools to help guide your SEO strategy?
- Do you adapt your strategy or add new throughout the campaign?
- How do you stay up-to-date on industry changes and Google updates?
- How often do you report on progress and what does it look like?
If a company cannot readily give you well laid out answers to these questions or demonstrate what and how effective they’ve been for current and previous clients, it’s probably a good indicator that you may want to continue your search.
There are also two other very popular questions that are also asked even before those listed above. They are:
- Can you guarantee immediate results?
- Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing, and Yahoo?
These are “reasonable” questions. However, the answers you are given may indicate immediately whether or not you should consider that company.
If the answer is, “Yes”, end your discussion immediately.
If a company is “guaranteeing” such results – and may even be able to demonstrate from current client results that this is indeed true – they are using black hat techniques as mentioned earlier. The initial results may be fantastic. Your website may zoom to the top position of Page 1 on Google. But…it can be guaranteed that it won’t stay there. Eventually, Google will catch on – and when they do – your site will receive penalties or even be taken out of the listings altogether. Depending on the type of penalty that’s been given, it could take days, weeks, months, or in some severe cases…years for your website to be put back in their index.
Meeting Your Goals
How long will it be until we can expect to see results?
This is a very legitimate question. The answer we usually give is: At least six months, though in most cases we see improvement sooner.
We measure the success of our SEO campaign for your site by whether or not we are meeting the goals that we have discussed and determined with you.
Some of the answers to the “Top Ten Questions” are answered on the “Search Engine Optimization” page of our website.
However, we will be more than happy to help answer all the questions listed above as well as any others you may have if you contact us.
We want to do everything we can to help you make an informed decision concerning your SEO.
