Bretts Marketing Bytes

To know how to find a good SEO firm you must understand the difference between performing SEO tasks and actually getting ranking results.

Whats the difference between SEO and ranking results?

First off there is a lot of gray area when it comes to the term SEO. So your company might sign up for SEO services and not get any results. WHY? because there are a lot of web development firms/SEO firms claiming to perform SEO techniques but they are only doing the bare minimum or what was good 5 years ago.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Think about this… What does that mean? It means that a company will optimize  your website for search engines. In the old days when a site was ranked well, we used to say, wow, thank site is optimized. But today it is much different and there is more that goes into it than just optimizing a page or site.

Optimizing a page is the process of changing page copy and meta tags to include keywords. But, what about link building? Is link building really SEO? A lot of people think so, but I disagree. I think Link building is a part of the end result, which is “Ranking.” I truly believe there is a difference between SEO and Ranking, and if you understand the difference between the two,  you can protect yourself from being mislead.

On-page optimization

Everyone and their brother is doing on-page optimization(Changing page copy and meta tags.) What makes you think that your website is going to rank better than any of theirs?  I hope you don’t say because you have your keywords on the page more frequently than they do. Oh boy, you are really behind if you think that. Those days are long gone. Search engines are way smarter than that now.

On-page optimization is the bare minimum that needs to be done. There is so much more that goes into ranking a page on a website for key terms.

So, how do you know if you are getting the bare minimum? I have created a small list of red flags below.

You are not going to get results:

• When you pay cheap prices. If you are paying cheap prices chances are good you are getting cheap service and you are wasting your money. I had a client who was paying $100 per month to another company before me to rank for 15 keywords. Needless to say they were not ranking for anything after 1 year. If you are paying $100 per month you will never rank for anything unless you get lucky. Save your money and learn SEO on your own.
• When an SEO asks you to come up with your own keywords. How can you come up with your own keywords, you are not the expert, the SEO is. The SEO should only use your keywords as a guideline toward better key terms.
• When the SEO firm tries to rank your home page for more than 3 terms.
• When the SEO firm does not create landing pages for your products or services. I just met with a company who was working with another SEO/web firm who was trying to rank their home page for 10 key terms. Think about this. If Google’s whole algorithm is based on  pulling up relevant content for a search query, how could your home page possibly be relevant for 10 terms? It can’t.
• When the SEO firm does not create links to your individual pages. You cannot rank for competitive terms without links. Note: not just directory submissions either.
• When the SEO firm does not provide monthly ranking reports. How do you know how you are ranking if you cannot see progress?
• When the SEO firm does not offer recommendations on site structure. 9 times out of 10 when I go in to talk to a company their site navigation structure is a mess when it comes to SEO and Ranking.
• When the SEO firm says that they will rank your site for broad terms. Example: Candy, Plumbing, cards, drinks… This should tell you that they don’t understand targeting and they are flat out lying. Those terms are too broad.
• When the SEO firm guarantees results. Truthfully no one can guarantee results as the search engines are in charge not the SEO.
• When the SEO firm cannot provide both national and geographic examples of their work.

I hope these help. Zoodle Marketing Group provides top end ranking results.