headlineseo.com

There are bunch of companies out there thinking they do SEO w/o having a clue about Internet Marketing..

How to choose a professional SEO Company?

1- Check their (SEO Companies’) sample rankings with competitive search terms..use inventory.overture.com to see if their search terms are really competitive.. Bunch of SEO companies shows ranking with tricky search terms nobody use…
2- Call their top ranking clients to verify if they are real, and ask about the benefits they are getting from SEO services..
3- Find out how long they have been doing SEO…

To find a good SEO Company…
Let me tell you how one of our clients found us.
He is a real estate broker in a city here in South Florida. He wants to work with an SEO Company who does not already serve to his competitors..That is why he used yahoo search by using another big city name which has more competition “Miami Real Estate”
and found out who handles their SEO work..and contacted that company (us). He knows we can even do better work for him.
btw same client of ours is #2 on Google #1 on Yahoo.. I will be more than happy to show you our clients’ rankings..

Thanks
Troy
SEO Company
http://jump2top.com

Study the SEO company
Read through the company website. Does the site list specific goals and techniques? Does it discuss using ethical (white hat) SEO techniques? Does it inspire confidence, or does it read like an empty sales pitch?

Check the company domain’s…example: click to see our whois details
http://whois.domaintools.com/ontheavenues.com . How long has the domain been registered for? Does the company list complete and accurate whois details? If the domain is new, or if the whois details aren’t listed, you may be looking at a fly-by-night company.

Study the SEO results
Start with the SEO company’s own website. But “SEO” has 118,000,000 results in Google, and “search engine optimization” has 27,200,000 results, so don’t expect the site to rank high for these generic terms. Also note that some SEO companies don’t try to optimize their own sites for SEO because they get most of their business through referrals.

The important SEO results to check are those of SEO companies’ clients. If they link to their clients’ sites from their sites, look for keyword phrases in the title and heading tags of those sites, and see how those sites do in search results for those keyword phrases. Look for backlinks to those sites by entering “link:domain.com” (with the right domain and without the quotation marks) in different search engines.

If the SEO company is on your shortlist, contact some of those clients to ask for feedback about the SEO company. Are they still using the SEO company’s services? Did they see an improvement in search results for their site, and have the improvements lasted? If they needed an SEO company for a new site, would they hire the same company?

Ask questions
The answers to these questions will show you if you’re dealing with experts or people who don’t really know what they’re doing.

What steps do you take to optimize websites for search engines? They may not want to tell you exactly what they do, but they should list steps such as researching and using keywords, making the coding search engine friendly, and getting inbound links. If they’re vague, or if they name black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or doorway pages, go to the next company on the list.

How do you do keyword research? They should start by learning what your site is about, what keywords already work for it, and how your business is different from the competition. A number of keyword suggestion tools are available, both free and paid. The important points are that the SEO company will research relevant, searched-for keywords for your site and that they’ll look for keyword phrases, not single keywords.

Do you offer guarantees? If they offer a guarantee other than a money-back guarantee, or a promise that they won’t accept payment until your site is on page X in the SERP for a specific keyword, don’t trust them. The SEO business is not one in which you can guarantee exact results.

What do you think of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? If they don’t stay completely within these guidelines, your site could be in trouble.

What types of sites will you try to get inbound links from? The answer should be relevant, quality sites, including directories, but not including link farms. If they don’t think that inbound links are important for SEO, they aren’t going to get the desired results.

Do you work on improving the conversion rate? Improving the conversion rate is not SEO. But getting more traffic to your site won’t benefit you unless your site works well for site visitors after they arrive. If your conversion rate could use improvement and an SEO company can help with this area too, you benefit more. You can hire a separate company to work on your conversion rate, but they’ll need to be careful not to override any of the SEO work done to your site.

How do you keep up with changes in your field? The important point here is whether they do keep up with industry news. But you’ll probably know by the answers so far whether they do.

What payment structure do you use? Be wary of companies that ask you to pay the full amount at the beginning. If they’re going to be doing ongoing work for you, you should be able to pay at various stages.

Expect to be questioned
The SEO company representatives should have questions for you too. They should want to find out if your expectations are realistic and fit with the type of work they do. They’ll need to learn about your website, your audience, your competition, your focus, and your business goals.

Expect to wait
If the service is good, the company will be in demand, so there may be a waiting list. Start researching before you need the work to be done.

How to choose a professional SEO Company? The plain fact is that there are very few excellent SEO companies but there are tens of thousands of SEO companies that advertise their poor quality services. It is an unregulated and relatively new industry in considerable demand, so this is not so surprising.

Good SEO companies are in great demand and the first thing NOT to do is use one that offers their services on Yahoo answers! No professional SEO that is any good has the time to solicit clients through such a medium or even needs to do so.

Here is the procedure I recommend.

Start by looking here http://www.seoconsultants.com/ which is about the nearest you can get to peer reviewed SEO consultants directory. Draw up a list of (say 10) companies whose web presence and spectrum of services meet with your approval.

Then make a simple initial approach to these companies and reduce the 10 to a short list of 3 or 4 based on the quality of their response (as you see it) and their understanding of your requirements.

Now interview the companies on your shortlist and include the following questions and requests:

1. Ask for 5+ references and current clients and make sure you follow them all up taking notes along the way.

2. What type of reporting will they provide?

3. Do they offer Return On Investment (ROI) analysis?

4. Can they assure you that the optimization strategies and methods used will be ethical and hence guarantee no penalties for your website?

5. Do they place a link on their clients sites to their site? If they do you can reject them right away.

6. Ask to see a sample contract. Check that it says ‘what is’ and ‘what isn’t’ required on the clients part and also details what they say they will do.

7. How many hours will they put into working on your site?

8. Make sure you will not be ‘ransomed’ if you decide not to use them any more at some stage.

9. Do they outsource any of the work? If they do you can reject them right away.

10. What results can you expect and over what time scales?

Once you have the answers to these questions for the companies on your short list you will find making a correct choice quite straightforward.

One last comment. The best SEOs in the world work for themselves because they make more money that way and those that choose to have clients do not come cheap.

SEO companies can be real scams.

My number 1 answer is to avoid any SEO companies that called you by telemarketing!

Also, you can use a broker service where the SEO provider has a clear stake in ranking because of future business:
http://www.themarketingcouple.com/likes/elance

Simple as this DO NOT i repeat DO NOT pay ANY company to do SEO for you they are ALL SCAM! i will do it for free !!! I At least know something about it and i freaking hate it when people get ripped off ! , if you want to check it out there are some SEO books, you can also try http://www.seobook.com . guy explains alot about SEO etc.

if you want to contact me just visit my site http://bontb.com and send me private message or email.

check for “professional seo company” on major search engines. google, yahoo and MSN.

Take top 10 results from each of them. compare those 30 urls and get the common url. Those are really professional companies as per best search engines.

Then check their policies, guidelines which they follow while implementing. check whether they do SEO in quick time (say in 1-2 weeks time). Dont believe in those.

Also ask for their other clients name. check whether those websites are performing well for their primary keyword.

Ask if they can give you 24/7 on call/email support. Know whether they will dedicate atleast 1 resources to your project.

Make sure you get answers for all the above and you can be sure that the SEO company is professional enough to approach further..

you can contact me I work for an advertising network. we reach out to 115 million uniques and 4 billion searches each month.
james@adonnetwork.com