"First and foremost you need to be able to trust your search engine marketing professional as much as you trust your webmaster, designer, programmer, etc."

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a key part of every websites internet marketing plan. However, regardless of all the guidelines and information available regarding ways to optimize your web site for high ranking in the search engines, many site owners find that it takes a professional with the ability to take all aspects for ranking into consideration and to fine tune their site(s) for high ranking. Since not everyone has the time or patience to become an expert in SEO, I have created the following article of guidelines, red flags, and expectations to be considered when hiring an optimization service or independent SEO.

Let's begin with liabilities and ethics.

First and foremost you need to be able to trust your search engine marketing professional as much as you trust your webmaster, designer, programmer, etc. In fact, you may need to trust them even a bit more since most SEO's will require FTP access to your site/server and will be modifying your design, working around your programming, and/or performing administrative duties such as registering domains and making purchases using your company information.

You want to make sure that the optimizer is backing up all original work and provides you with a copy of your site before and after their work is completed, either residing on your server or burned on CD. I prefer both.

Your optimizers should have more than just an elementary knowledge of HTML coding and other languages – you must make it clear that the optimizer is responsible for fixing any broken functionalities their work may cause. In most cases, optimizers simply work around any PHP, CGI, ASP, or other coded plugins, however depending on how your site is developed, you may want to consider having your site copied and optimized on a development domain so that you and your team are able to review functionality, textual changes, and general optimization requested according to your business, before it goes live online.

Other liabilities that your optimizer should consent responsibility for is the ethical use of keywords; meaning, they will not use stolen or copied meta tags, copyrighted text, or trademarked terms in the optimization of your site. This also accounts for domain name registrations – make sure your targeted terms and phrases are not protected under law by another entity.

For example, if your site features centerfolds and girls who have been in Playboy, you must have written, expressed permission from Playboy to target these keywords in the optimization of your site (meta tags, se-friendly text, mentioning it more than once), and good luck gaining permission to register “my-playboy-models.com” – these protected terms can undo thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work in a matter of a minutes.

Talk about your products with your optimizer and make sure they understand which terms can be targeted and what other text may be required, even for doorway pages. In this right, you and your optimizer are equally responsible for knowing your limitations and liabilities.

I recently read an article based on Google's Guide for Hiring an SEO. In this list I agree with the following statements:

”Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.”

An ethical SEO firm will not spam potential customers. And trust me, there is no company out there doing unsolicited reviews of every site on the internet. Always be cautious when responding or considering an offer which comes via SPAM.

”No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

Many companies will simply take your advertising dollars and open up a Google AdWords campaign and therefore say within a few days “You are #2 in Google for 'xxx videos'”. This is not optimization, this is media buying. An SEO is a lot like a Doctor or a Lawyer: They cannot guarantee anything beyond that they will perform their job to the best that their experience and education can offer.

”Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.”

Many companies have pools of traffic they have gained either by redirects, browser hijacking, popups, or basically otherwise “junk traffic”. Remember that buying traffic is not the same as paying for optimization, and if they are not open about what exactly to your site they plan to do, back away or ask to talk to previous customers and see their sites.

”You should never have to link to an SEO.”

You should never HAVE to link to anyone. Some companies will say they can boost your PR (Page Rank) in Google if you pay for a link trade or pay to be included in which is basically a PR link farm. This are being detected by Google more and more, and is a short term way and short sighted attempt at boosting rankings whilst ignoring the fact that the number of keywords they could be ranking will not be affected.

To expand more on the above, here are a few other tips of my own:

”Be wary of an SEO who claims they can market your site without requesting FTP access to actually optimize the site.”

Unless you work out an agreement with the optimizer to send you or your webmasters pages to upload for them, than an optimizer is not doing his/her job. Optimization means making actual changes to the text and code of a web page aimed at increasing the pages overall keyword ranking as well as increasing the number of keywords it ranks for. It's as simple as that.

”Be wary; some SEO's who 'guarantee' rankings are simply buying PPC or PP (Paid Placement) with they money you are spending"

These results will disappear as soon as your money does and again, this is not optimization - its media buying.

SEO is expensive; expect to pay between $55 to $150 per hour or more for page optimization and submission services. And remember, no matter what; always have your optimizer start with your site before agreeing to any suggestions regarding registering additional “promotional domains”.

If you do select to proceed with additional domains, make sure you are in control of their hosting and administrative settings. The biggest mistake I see made are people paying for internet marketing and SEO services and end up not owning the actual pages/domains that they paid to have highly indexed – some companies will even change the links and revert traffic from promotional domains to other clients once you stop paying.

It is always best to learn as much as you can about search engine optimization and marketing, including submission schedules, on your own - not only is it a great skill to have, it will save you money and provide you with the ability to make better long term choices about your site, from design to content.

Remember no matter what – if you pay for it or services on it (pages/domains) – you own it and you keep it.

Developing property for long term rankings and getting visitors to the most relevant pages of your site in the fewest clicks as possible will put you ahead of your competition in no time at all! Until next time, Happy Promoting!