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No doubt that most companies in the United States have a great, functional and informative website. Getting potential customers to those websites, however, is not as easy as putting a website together. Understanding how much Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can do for your business can make a big difference in how many of those potential customers come to your site rather than your competitors.
When looking to hire an SEO, it’s not easy to find someone that is knowledgeable, skilled and the one for you, there are thousands to sift through. Hiring an SEO company from a bigger city may not be feasible because of the cost involved and smaller cities may not have too big of a selection of service providers that have much experience. So there is much work to be done to balance out your needs with what’s available out there. Here are a few things you can do to help you get started.
How To Find a Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Firm
- Do a search in Google for “Seattle SEO” (replace Seattle with your own city) to find local potential candidates.
- Check the local phone directory for more.
- Ask them questions. Use the information below 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 may be priced significantly lower than in bigger cities like Seattle.
What a good SEO should know
- No guarantees. It is impossible to guarantee a position in Search Engines. If they are promising you a first place in Google for the keyword “real estate”, fire them right there. They are trying to pull a fast one or are not up to date on Search Engine Optimization facts.
- Focus on your goals. Their should be focusing on addressing your particular marketing goals
- Keyword research. They should have knowledge and skills to do keyword research to find the best keywords to pursue.
- Focus individual pages. They should know that every page within the website should be focused on it’s own, unique keyword.
- Page titles. They should know that every page should have a unique page title.
- Meta information. They should know what information goes into Meta Description and Meta Keywords and what purpose each carries for Search Engines.
- On-page elements. They should have knowledge about the use of 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.
- Interlinking pages on the website. They should know how it is best to interlink the pages and what to use for the anchor text for those links.
- Using “nofollow”. They should have knowledge about how Google uses the “nofollow” attribute within the links.
- Use of a sitemap file. They should know how to create, what to do with and the purpose of a sitemap.xml file.
- Additional Online Marketing skills. They should also posses other Online Marketing skills, like article marketing, social media marketing and link building.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions and dont’ feel intimidated with their technical speak. If you don’t understand something, ask them to explain. This list of things an SEO should know will help you sort out the real SEOs from amateurs.
