SEO services are all the fad today, with people claiming to be “gurus”, knowing “ninja tricks” and promising to have your site ranked in the top 5 or 10 next month if you pay them enough. But before you get too carried away with all of the hysteria and crazy promises, it is a good idea to slow down and ask a few questions, both of yourself, and any consultant you may consider for your small business search engine optimization needs.
If you hear a guarantee that you will be ranked #1 in just six weeks, it’s time to walk away. No credible search engine optimization consultant should guarantee that your site will rank at a certain spot in a certain time frame. That’s because we don’t control the game, the search engines do! Our job is to decipher the rules of the game as closely as possible, remembering that the different search engines all have different rules, and they aren’t talking! So no guarantees, because only Google, Yahoo!, Bing and the rest can really issue guarantees. But what we can offer is experience, having helped others before move their websites from search engine obscurity to top placement in a matter of a few months time.
Another question to ask concerns the size of the market you are trying to dominate. Is there a difference in ranking for a localized service or product when compared to a national market? Or even an international market? Of course there is, and any SEO consultant you speak with had better be prepared to answer your questions on that score. And that includes pricing as well. Stay clear of anyone claiming that the work is all the same and that a small local job should expect to wait as long for results or pay as much as national campaign.
Here’s another question that deserves to be asked, but often isn’t. Are all keywords created the same? No, they are not. If someone promises to have you ranked for a keyword and you don’t ask which keyword, you may be paying for garbage. It’s no trick to rank well for your own name, but that counts as a keyword in some people’s mind. The trick is finding the right keywords. The ones that will make you money.
Even if you don’t even have a website yet, or are looking for someone to boost your existing website in the search engine results, we can put together a package that works for your budget. Each client is different, of course, and some markets are different than others, but we have found that having two or three basic levels of service, starting at $250 a month, for clients to choose from works for just about everybody.