Tips for Hiring a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Company

There is no doubt that most businesses in the United States have a great, functional, and informative website. However, attracting potential customers to those websites is not as easy as putting together a website. Understanding how much search engine optimization (SEO) can do for your business can make a big difference in how many of those potential customers visit your site instead of your competitors.

When looking to hire an SEO, it’s not easy to find someone who is knowledgeable, skilled and just right for you, there are thousands to sift through. Hiring an SEO company from a larger city may not be feasible due to the cost involved and smaller cities may not have as large a selection of highly experienced service providers. So there’s a lot of work to be done to balance your needs with what’s available. Here are some things you can do to help you get started.

How to Find a Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Company

• Do a Google search for “Seattle SEO” (replace Seattle with your own city) to find potential local candidates.
• Check your local telephone directory for more information.
• Ask them questions. Please use the following information as a guide for your questions.
• Keep in mind that SEO is not a one-time hire, but an ongoing project.
• SEOs in smaller cities can be significantly lower in price than in larger cities like Seattle.

What a good SEO should know

• No guarantees. It is impossible to guarantee a position in the search engines. If they’re promising you a top spot on Google for the keyword “real estate,” fire them right there. They are either trying to get a quick one or are not up to date on search engine optimization facts.
• Focus on your goals. They should focus on addressing their particular marketing goals.
• Keyword research. They must have knowledge and skills to conduct keyword research to find the best keywords to search for.
• Individual focus pages. They should know that each page within the website should focus on its own unique keyword.
• Page titles. They should know that each page must have a unique page title.
• Meta information. They should know what information goes into the meta description and meta keywords and what purpose each serves for search engines.
• Elements on the page. They should have knowledge about the use of the H1 – H6, Strong, Underline, Image Alt and Link Title elements and should be able to explain how they will be used to focus the pages.
• Interconnection of pages on the website. They need to know the best way to interlink the pages and what to use as anchor text for those links.
• Using “nofollow”. They should be aware of how Google uses the “nofollow” attribute within links.
• Using a sitemap file. They should know how to create, what to do, and the purpose of a sitemap.xml file.
• Additional online marketing skills. They must also possess other online marketing skills such as article marketing, social media marketing, and link building.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and don’t be intimidated by your technical talk. If you don’t understand something, ask them to explain it to you. This list of things an SEO should know will help you distinguish real SEOs from amateurs.