Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How To Select Your SEO Consultant

By Martin Worgan


An SEO consultant's job role includes a wide subject area, from discovering and resolving issues in the coding of your site which are preventing it from ranking successfully to increasing the popularity of your website through the building of appropriate links. SEO consultants come from a range of different backgrounds and this impacts upon their preferred optimisation method. An SEO Consultant's primary role is to improve your rank within Google and other search engines.

Google, Yahoo and Bing are now extremely adept at sniffing out any websites that have been manipulating their search engine rankings using underhand SEO methods. Often, penalties for these bad practices will result in a temporary ranking drop pending an alteration in optimisation methods, however in the worst case scenario a site can be entirely de-listed from the search engine. Like most industries there are good and bad consultants so you can use the following tips to help you to choose a good SEO consultant for you and avoid the chance of getting your website rankings penalised.

Does the SEO consultant respect SEO best practices? You will find that search engine companies issue their policies regarding the way websites should be built and marketed. They additionally produce a clear list of practices that are not considered acceptable and will result in penalties. Be sure that the professional you select to look after your SEO practices 'White Hat' SEO that follows search engine guidelines and steers well clear of anything that could cause your site reputation permanent damage.

Make certain that your brand will be protected and that the optimisation method is capable of providing consistent results in the long term. You would be devastated if a month or two after hiring an SEO consultant your ranking with the search engines began to fluctuate in an unstable way and your site was negatively affected. Business could be hindered and your clients could get a poor impression which could cause lasting damage. Don't be afraid to ask the consultant as many questions as you like about their method and approach to SEO. Even if you do not completely understand everything that is said, your questioning is probably going to make them adopt a more methodical approach to the Search Engine Optimisation for yourwebsite

Are their chosen strategies likely to be attractive to web users? Good SEO consultants optimise sites with web users in mind first and rather than prioritising the search engine ranking. All of the major search engine companies state that websites should be built to give visitors the best experience possible with good, relevant material and a simple structure of navigation. One part of the role of an SEO professional is to advise on ways to enhance the content of your site and make it more relevant to specific search terms. Don't forget that the purpose of your site should be to satisfy your visitors needs. Request to see examples of websites that a consultant has previously optimised.

Which is the most important; quality or quantity? The quantity of your site visitors is not equal to the importance of the quality of the visitor. 100 site visitors and 10 sales is more helpful than 1000 visitors and no sales. It is of extreme importanceto select the correct words for your SEO campaign. As an illustration, lets pretend that you sell blue Widgets. You might get a huge quantity of visitors to your website due to the professional optimisation of the site for 'Widgets', only the individuals visiting are all looking for green Widgets so this has no increase in sales. If the site had been optimised with the keywords 'Blue Widgets', however, you would have a much better chance of seeing an a positive impact on in your number of sales.

What services are offered by the SEO? It is vital to know exactly what services they are going to carry out. Certain consultants simply adopt an advisory role, they view your website, assess your competitors and subsequently submit a report telling you that you need to do A, B and C to make your site rank well. That is fine if you have a development team available, but not so helpful if you don't. Other consultants however will apply the work for you after they have taken care of the strategy work.

How much does the consultant charge? Although this is an obvious question, it is also tricky. Make price comparisons between various consultants and make sure that you compare like for like. If possible, find out the likely cost of optimising a site of a similar size to your own. No professional SEO consultant will promise to get you to the number one position, as there are so many variables to consider.

Do you get on well with the SEO consultant? You don't have to become the best of friends but an easy working relationship will go a long way to making your SEO campaign more successful. In every aspect of SEO there will be times when a consultant may either just do enough to fulfil their contract or go al out to achieve great results. If you possess a great working relationship with your SEO consultant and are friendly with each other it is likely to mean you obtain the best results.



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