Q. Do you offer any guarantees?
A. We do not guarantee placement unless you are participating in a pay-for-placement search engine program such as Adwords/Overture. Despite what other online marketing companies claim, no one can guarantee top search engine placement because there is a 3rd party who has all of the control: the search engines.
What we can guarantee is that we will help you with keyword selection, meta-tag and other web copywriting, submission, and optimal site design architectures for the search engines and improvement in ranking. We are committed to your success because if you are successful, they you will continue to do business with us.
Q. What are the changes to be made on my Web site, and who’s responsible for those changes? Are they extensive?
A. The changes are generally easy to implement and remain the quickest, and most reliable for becoming “search engine friendly”. Visible text copy on their current Web site will “have to” change in order to achieve maximum success. Your Webmaster and/or your technical staff will be able to make our suggested changes with little effort, and the appearance of your Web site will remain the same.
Q. Will I get to pick my own keywords?
A. Your final approval is required prior to the start of your campaign. However, our technical staff will make suggestions based on research and evaluation of keywords from your industry and Web site.
Q. What happens if I do not continue with a search engine maintenance and submission plan?
A. To maintain quality search results, search engines frequently change their ranking algorithms. The continuous changes prevent hucksters and unsavory sites from appearing in searches in which they do not belong. If you do not pay attention to the changes, your site will gradually decline in the rankings. It goes without saying that if your competition does pay attention, their rankings will improve.
Another consideration is the fact that search engines are growing rapidly. Sites periodically disappear from search engine listings. Unfortunately, it takes time to get back into a search engine once the site disappears. A search engine maintenance plan with a reliable Web consulting firm will insure that your site is monitored and optimized for current search engine algorithms.
Q. What’s the difference between you and your competitors?
A. We charge a lower price but offer more. We do keyword research for you so that you will not target the wrong keywords. In addition, we identify any problematic HTML codes in your web site and advise you how to correct the problems. As a result, your web site can be cleaner and can rank higher in major search engines. Also, we offer business advice for you to improve sales conversion ratio. Our competitors do not help you to make more money.
We use ethical techniques. We don’t use spamming, cloaking, doorway pages and other techniques unwelcomed by major search engines. Unlike our competitors, we won’t need you to register a new domain name and store at our server. Our competitors do this because they can force you to join their monthly maintenance plan or else you lose all your work.
Lastly, we are also a design and development firm so we can help execute your interactive needs while always keeping in mind that the site will need to be search engine friendly.
Q. Many companies say that they can achieve high rankings. How can I judge?
A. Good question! Seldom is there such a clear-cut way to evaluate providers as there is in the search engine optimization (SEO) business. A potential SEO provider can be evaluated within a few moments. Instead of reading Web pages and fluff, you can test for results.
Ask the consulting for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firm for a list of their Web sites and for the SEO’s designated search phrases. Perform a search and see if the sites come up in the top 10 to 40 returns. Few will. You will quickly weed out the pretenders.
The SEO company should be able to quickly show you status reports that show your current rankings and how you stack up against your competitors.
