Taken for a Ride by SEO?

It is something I've come across many times in the past. Prospective clients who's previous company have promised the earth and left them distrustful of S to the E to the O. The problem is, its not hard to pull the wool over a clients eyes. In the same way as a mechanic can tell you your carburetor needs to be replaced a suspect SEO can stress replacing expensive websites with timely changes or highly expensive link campaigns which never lead to rankings increases.

If you think there's something suspect about your prospective seo company then get a few quotes. There seems to be no shortage of companies offering the service at the moment. Although there is a lot of jargon and buzz words that can confuse the issue make sure you find out the following.

Ask for examples of work on previous clients. Even if the client is no longer with the company they should be able to show you some keywords which they are ranking for. Remember that it is very easy to rank for a term like "glasgow web design company near city center". Make sure you are shown examples of keywords that Google users are actually searching for.

If you are promised rankings in a timescale shorter than a month then walk away. Promises should never be given even by the cockiest of seo's. No one has the direct line to influence the search engines. If promises are given then there's a very good chance that the seo company will be using less than ethical practices. What are these unethical practices. Well, probably outsourcing the linking campaigns

This sounds a bit obvious but when you are given reports showing where your site is located for certain keywords, check. I once spoke with a company who were told that they were on page one for all of their keywords. We had a look and they weren't in the top 100. If your keywords are on the right hand side of the search results then your paying for them to run adwords on your behalf. I've seen it happen.

The link campaign that is being constructed on your sites behalf should be transparent. You should be able to query what links have been created every month. Should, it'll be a bit of a pain for the seo company to provide you the link report but its good practice for them to know how successful their link building has been. If your links are coming from the dodgy parts of the internet you can get banned from the search engines.

If you are shown reports detailing traffic increases then ask to see where this traffic is coming. Organic search engine traffic is what you are looking for as well as referrals from the right kind of sites. What's more, this traffic should convert into sales or enquiries.

SEO can work for your site but you need to make sure that your seo company is held accountable for what they do with your sites reputation.