Good advice when choosing an SEO service....

[motech]

I work for a large SEO company.

There are a few things you should look for and a few things you should avoid
when you're looking to hire a company to do "seo" for you.

1) Never pay more than $6,000 for optimization of 20 keywords for 12 months.
That's total cost. If you come to a total higher than that when you add in
"maintenence fees" or any other such silly fees, you're paying too much.

2) Make sure they have a reporting system that's always available. You should
have 24/7 access to reports that are VERIFIABLE! Don't get suckered into
"Bi-Monthly hand generated reports" or anything else along those lines.

3) Make sure (and this one you should really, REALLY, pay attention to, even though
it sounds silly) the company you're looking at can actually GET RESULTS.
When I say results, I mean multiple rankings for the same client that has
keywords in the millions of pages catagory.
So they showed you one? Great! Have them show you more! and MORE and MORE!!!
Either the company you're going to contract with CAN or CAN'T do what they say they can do.
If they can, then they will have no problem showing you client after client that has results.

4) Make sure that YOU get the final say for your keywords and make them your TOUGHEST!
Keyword selection is, by far, one of THE most important parts of the seo
process. The company should have knowledgeable technicians with a wealth
of data at their fingertips to ensure you're picking the highest quality keywords.

5) Make sure they update your seo data on a REGULAR basis. This means
every few days now. Anything less and you're not going to have consistent rankings.

What to avoid?

1) Seo companies that express a desire to "Manage" your pay per click sponsored search engine listings.

2) Seo companies that use the same base url for EVERY promotional site they build. How long is it going
to take the general public to catch on that yourproductorwebsite.<same seo company url>.com
in the search results is the same company? Not long.

3) Seo companies that use slandering OTHER seo companies as a way of getting business.
You're not talking to them to find out why you shouldn't be going with their
competition, you're talking to them to find out the merits of what
they can do for YOU!

4) Seo companies that spout testimonials. 4 lines of text on a web page is NOT impressive or even verifiable.
References should be: Clients you can actually talk to with a site
benefiting from the company's services. Any company that is large
enough to be able to do consistent seo will have happy clients willing to
share their personal experiences.

5) Making decisions based on "facts" you've read on a forum somewhere.
Forums are NOT verifiable sources and are often run by seo companies
themselves to provide a very biased environment. Do your own research,
don't take someone else's opinion for it.

If only one person follows a few pieces of my advice and successfully chooses
a reputable seo company, my job is done. I help people achieve placement on
the search engines every day and I must say I enjoy it thoroughly.

Please do not PM me to ask what company I work for. I will not give out that
information and I have no desire to "talk" about other companies in this industry.

My only desire in posting on this forum is to give advice that will help my industry become a better place.

The more information people have before making a decision, the less opportunity there is for unethical seo companies to exist.

It's 9:44PST do you know what YOUR current rankings are? :)

[motech]

Can anyone think of anything I might have left out?

[OpenPress.Com]

Yeah.

#1 Visit OOOMOOO.COM and do everything yourself, FREE. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO ) the most important thing is getting backlinks with anchor text and OOOMOOO.COM shows you how to do it free and fast.

#2. Don't hire an SEO until you have done what OOOMOOO.COM says you should do AND you have waited 6 months or so for the results since search engines do not update very often.

Max

[motech]

Yeah.

#1 Visit OOOMOOO.COM and do everything yourself, FREE. When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO ) the most important thing is getting backlinks with anchor text and OOOMOOO.COM shows you how to do it free and fast.

#2. Don't hire an SEO until you have done what OOOMOOO.COM says you should do AND you have waited 6 months or so for the results since search engines do not update very often.

Max

Backlinks with anchor text brings up a good point... the seo service you choose
should have a large number of clients for this very thing. The best backlink
you can have is to another site THAT HAS PLACEMENT. *ahem*

Unless you depend on the traffic to your website for commerce. And/Or you have
hours and hours a week to spend on this. You're going to want to hire an seo firm.

6 months??? You should see results within 30-90 days.
BTW.. which search engines are you talking about that don't update very often? Certainly not Google MSN and Yahoo. All those other little ones.. right? Or are you talking about indexing every few months? As in including your site into their database?
Your seo service should be updating the code every 2-3 days now. So that everytyhing is
fresh when the webcrawlers come by. My client's rankings are climbing higher
every week... how could that be if the search engines only update every so often? I have clients that have been hit by googlebot 4 times this month and it's only what? The 10th? Obviously you're talking about the smaller search engines or something. I'm really not sure.

Nice commercial and I hope it's a service that works for folks that don't have a website for income. Heck.. it would be fabulous for folks that DO depend on
their website for commerce... but I wouldn't trust it. *shrug*
Try it with a non-commerce site first maybe?

Anyway people... the idea is to NOT get reamed by either the search engines or an seo service.

[motech]

They offer the links for free so that you'll stay and buy their tools.
You'll find that out after you read through the obligitory "seo companies
will get you blacklisted" crap.

This is a prime example of what to avoid. Their tools may indeed be good.
Their methods of getting you to their site is shady, which brings into question
how honest and forthright they're going to be with their software.
Bad form guys. Bad form.

I'll give you honest advice without trying to push my own company.
If anyone else would like to ADD to the information, not disinformation, I would
love to hear it.

p.s. SUBMISSION DOESN'T WORK PEOPLE!!!! If it did, all of the tens of millions
of folks that bought submission software would be at the top of the search engines now.
Guess what... unless the search engine is still based on submission, They aren't. Over 80% of the traffic goes through search engines that are NOT based on submission.

[motech]

Please do not PM me to ask what company I work for. I will not give out that
information and I have no desire to "talk" about other companies in this industry.

My only desire in posting on this forum is to give advice that will help my industry become a better place.

The more information people have before making a decision, the less opportunity there is for unethical seo companies to exist.

It's 9:44PST do you know what YOUR current rankings are? :)

I'm sorry, I'm someone who's ethical, has integrity and tells the truth all the time, so
Again... please don't PM me to ask what company I work for and NO I personally
do NOT do any seo. I work for a killer company that does.
If you asked me on the street I will proudly tell you what company I work
for. I LOVE my choice of employment. :)

When people tell you "The truth shall set you free", they don't tell you
what a 'personal' experience that is.
The hardest part about being honest 100% of the time is seeing
how miserable other people are, because they themselves are dishonest.

[Vinoth]

Pretty good, tut might many should read it.

[seobook]

>1) Never pay more than $6,000 for optimization of 20 keywords for 12 months.
That's total cost. If you come to a total higher than that when you add in
"maintenence fees" or any other such silly fees, you're paying too much.

totally disagree. some sites require that much spend per month in link renting.

>2) Make sure they have a reporting system that's always available. You should
have 24/7 access to reports that are VERIFIABLE! Don't get suckered into
"Bi-Monthly hand generated reports" or anything else along those lines.

your trafic logs should be the reporting system you use. not rankings. you should get targeted traffic. buy targeted traffic, not rankings.

>3) Make sure (and this one you should really, REALLY, pay attention to, even though
it sounds silly) the company you're looking at can actually GET RESULTS.
When I say results, I mean multiple rankings for the same client that has
keywords in the millions of pages catagory.
So they showed you one? Great! Have them show you more! and MORE and MORE!!!
Either the company you're going to contract with CAN or CAN'T do what they say they can do.
If they can, then they will have no problem showing you client after client that has results.

that sometimes depends. I only have a few clients. They rank fine. I intentionally only have a few clients because I do not want to spread myself too thin.

>4) Make sure that YOU get the final say for your keywords and make them your TOUGHEST!
Keyword selection is, by far, one of THE most important parts of the seo
process. The company should have knowledgeable technicians with a wealth
of data at their fingertips to ensure you're picking the highest quality keywords.

again, buy targeted traffic, not keyword placements. try to ensure that you get enough link popularity and your site is constructed well enough that you will show up for many terms. the trick for most effective seo is to get traffic for thousands of search queries and not just rank for some general ones.

>5) Make sure they update your seo data on a REGULAR basis. This means
every few days now. Anything less and you're not going to have consistent rankings.

really they should be constantly building links and if you can you should constantly build content.

>1) Seo companies that express a desire to "Manage" your pay per click sponsored search engine listings.

why should you avoid that? seeing that data helps them know what terms are best to target for your regular campaigns

>2) Seo companies that use the same base url for EVERY promotional site they build. How long is it going
to take the general public to catch on that yourproductorwebsite.<same seo company url>.com
in the search results is the same company? Not long.

articleinsider.com seems to do well with thousands and thousands of pages

>3) Seo companies that use slandering OTHER seo companies as a way of getting business.
You're not talking to them to find out why you shouldn't be going with their
competition, you're talking to them to find out the merits of what
they can do for YOU!

is that the intent of this how to find an seo post of yours? seems like in defining what is right and wrong that kinda talks negatively about others.

>4) Seo companies that spout testimonials. 4 lines of text on a web page is NOT impressive or even verifiable.
References should be: Clients you can actually talk to with a site
benefiting from the company's services. Any company that is large
enough to be able to do consistent seo will have happy clients willing to
share their personal experiences.

seeing if current clients are happy is a good call, but even they can be parrots for the company or actually other sites owned by the same company or friends of the company

>5) Making decisions based on "facts" you've read on a forum somewhere.
Forums are NOT verifiable sources and are often run by seo companies
themselves to provide a very biased environment. Do your own research,
don't take someone else's opinion for it.

gotta agree with that. cross reference and research.

[Mr.'BackUp']

Wow!

Lots of opinions here guys. I think everyone has a valid point, however I think the difference is that because the internet is still growing rapidly, SEO has become a fine art and the majority of people dont know the FACTS behing how the search engines weight websites. This leads to lots of misinformation and the like......however...
...I think that the overwhelming factor here is RESULTS and people with PROVEN track records in ranking and SEO. Otherwise most laymen will simply be baffled by the 'search' jargon that a prospective SEO company would spit at them.

<< Moderator Removed: Please setup a signature via your user profile >>

[seobook]

a proven track record is not even necissarily a legitimate gauge of knowledge since

-many people are only successful due to heavy brand building from a time when the algorithms were not as advanced as Google's current algorithm is
-those who got established a while ago got many links that may not be so easy to get today. for an example look at the multi year old .edu links pointing into crap search engine submission services.