Outsourcing your search engine optimization or SEO needs in San Diego to boost your site’s search engine placement and authority is an endeavor that should not be taken lightly. Here are some considerations to keep in mind in your research.
• Is your San Diego SEO firm legitimate?
Do they practice “white hat” SEO within Google’s terms of service? If not, your site could get “sandboxed” by Google – banned – and without any warning to you. Can you imagine a rogue SEO firm (or merely an inexperienced one) damaging your relationship with Google for you without you understanding how it happened?
• Is a real person working for you?
Many SEO firms use “bots” or “black hat” software to do their work for them. Your site gets put into a cookie cutter system that runs on auto-pilot and that is it! Status reports, updates and consulting on an effective individual SEO strategy is beyond their capability, not to mention their intention.
• Is your SEO expert available?
Many SEO companies take on too many clients for the staff they employ. You can assume this is the case with yours if you end up waiting days for a return phone call, then don’t get detailed answers to your questions when you do finally speak to them.
• Does your SEO expert understand business and marketing?
Most “techies” who do SEO actually do not understand fundamental business concepts, especially marketing. SEO that is not guided by experienced marketing knowledge, when successful, often brings irrelevant traffic to your site – not potential customers or clients for your business.
• Is your SEO expert really just a web designer?
Many web designers claim to understand SEO and it makes sense to they lay person that they might. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. It is actually rare to find a web designer who doubles as an expert in both on-site and off-site search engine optimization. Design and SEO are two different specialty fields that don’t typically attract people of similar skill sets.Rigorous keyword research, backlink building, page rank building, high PR links, blog commenting, search engine pinging, dofollow/nofollow links, linkwheels, etc. Does your web designer understand these essential SEO functions? And this is only the beginning of the list! Did your designer insist on a competitive analysis of relevant keywords before building your site? If not, he doesn’t understand SEO.
• Finally, does your SEO firm put concepts in terms that you understand?
Do they provide evidence of work completed and an explanation of how the work serves the long term needs of your site? If not, just remember the last time you dropped your car off to a roadside auto shop and said, “Do whatever it needs.”
