When not to hire a Search Engine Optimisation Company

According to research by Pew/Internet and by GVU, close to 85% of web users use search engines to find web sites. On any given day on-line, more than half those using the Internet use search engines. And more than two-thirds of Internet users say they use search engines at least a couple of times per week. Some 87% of search engine users say they find what they want most of the time when they use search engines. So when you approach a web design house, or Search Engine Company with a view to improving your search engine ranking and they promise to get you ranked in the first page, or even the first 5 pages of a particular search engine, why should you be cautious?

When a search engine or web design company offers to “submit your site to a hundred, several hundred or thousands of search engines and directories” walk away before you waste your time and money. Why? Because what they do is use submission software and advanced software scripts to submit your site to different guest books, local search engines, search engines in other languages, in other countries, to submit to search engines used only by fringe groups, specialist collectors, hobby groups, and things like Free For All pages, none of which will have any benefit whatsoever to your business. All you will receive is a massive increase in the amount of Spam email and potentially harmful junk mail as a result. In any event there are only 15 to 20 search engines in the world it's worth submitting to.

When any SEO company claims that they can guarantee you a number 1, top ten, or top twenty ranking on Google or Yahoo, don’t walk away – run! Why? Simply because absolutely no one can guarantee a number 1 position on any Search Engine. With new websites being added to the Internet at a rate of 1.35million each week, search engine indexes are growing and changing all the time. Even the biggest companies in SEO industry do not give such a guarantee. There are companies who claim that if they don’t achieve specific number of top 10 positions, you get your money back. Take even this with great caution, they are most likely lying, or they’ll get you ranked for abstract search words or terms that none of your potential customers will ever use.

If they claim that you will see the results within 1 month or less then take no notice and run away immediately. Why? If your site is brand new, it might take up to 6 months to get listed on major search engines. To get some results you should expect 3 to 4 months to be the minimum timeframe for seeing any appreciable difference in search engine results, longer where your site has fewer than 25 pages. You will need much more content than 5 or 10 pages, so any SEO company will have to work with you to add many more pages of content and not all at the same time to be effective – few will do this as it’s a very time-consuming task. Improving search engine ranking takes time and effort - nothing will change for several months, few SEO companies can afford to keep work up for this long for what they charge.

When they don't want to or won't disclose the exact techniques which they will use to rank your website walk away. Why? Because legal and ethical SEO Companies will give you very clear idea what they plan to do with your site, and will give you detailed plan of action BEFORE you pay them. Some of the quick fix techniques used by unscrupulous SEO companies will only serve to get your site banned from major search engines in the medium term so beware!

The ONLY way any SEO Company can promise you a marked improvement in ranking within 3 to 6 months is if they have a process called PPC (Pay per Click) in mind, and that has nothing at all to do with Search Engine Optimisation. Worse, it could become very costly indeed to your business.

So whoever you do choose to work with, make sure you get a clear plan of action, precise details about what they will do, a detailed breakdown of the costs involved before they start and although this may sound silly, work with people who don’t make absurd guarantees – that way at least you know they’re telling you the truth.