Finding a Good SEO Consultant

Finding effective SEO consulting is not an easy task. There are thousands of companies that claim to provide quality SEO services, but most do little more than make some minor on-site changes to your title tags and meta code which ultimately will have little impact on your ranking in a competitive search environment.

When looking for an Internet marketing consultant it is important to research the company that you are going to hire. When hiring an SEO consultant, take the following into consideration:

1. Be sure that your potential SEO consultant is very straight forward about what they are going to do for you, how they are going to do it, and how much it will cost. SEO is not rocket science, and if an SEO company is acting like their strategies are top secret they probably have something to hide.

2. Be sure your potential SEO consultant has a history of success with other projects including their own? If you request such, they should be able to provide you with contacts from other successful projects. If they cannot you are likely wasting your money.

3. It is helpful if your SEO consultant has experience in your industry? This is not essential as SEO is fairly broad across the all industries. However, someone that has had success in a non competitive local market may not find that same success in a competitive general market. You may also find it advantageous in terms of keyword analysis to work with someone that speaks your language in terms of business.

4. Be aware of companies that offer black hat tactics such as IP cloaking, tricky redirects, etc. I have found that most companies that use such tactics have very little idea of what they are doing and are just as likely to get your site banned by search engines as they are to get you to the top.

5. Web designers are not SEO consultants. Many web design companies try to moonlight in SEO. I have found that in almost all cases where I have seen this, they do a very poor job. When it comes to something as important as the ranking of yoru website, stick with a professional.

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