Choose Your Online Marketing Provider Wisely

Quick Tip: business owners hire local SEO companies to get their website ranked higher in the search engines. For higher search engine visibility hire a local SEO service provider.

Attempt to look for an SEO or Search Engine Optimization company on the internet and you'll see a confusing list of technical services and offerings. Searching in your local area on Google for SEO services can produce a more focused list of results such as "Northern VA SEO Services" however finding and interviewing are two totally different objectives.

Finding an SEO company takes planning.

If you're looking to have SEO services performed on your website, beware of the companies that offer to submit your site to search engines. Submitting your website to search engines is a bad SEO practice and can even harm your ranking results. It's much better to have the search engines find your website naturally rather than submitting it.

Search engine Directory submissions can be of benefit, which are different from direct search engine submissions. Your best option for online SEO success is to have Google find your website naturally. Keep that in mind when asking an SEO specialist if they will be submitting your site to search engines OR directories. Directory submissions are a good practice, search engine submissions are not.

It's a good idea to ask your SEO specialist if they will be creating a site map. Sitemaps are a good practice however the new Google standard is the .xml format. If your SEO specialist does not talk about .xml as a sitemap format then you should move on and interview others.

Ask them what tools they use to perform keyword research. Google provides a free keyword tool and there are many others however if your SEO specialist asks you for a keyword list about your business and goes not further then look for a specialist that uses a diverse mix of keyword tools and research techniques.

SEO best practices call for building links to your website, ask what link building techniques they use. Article marketing is probably the number one technique. Watch out for link building plans that grow your links too quickly, one thousand or less per month is a good practice.

Also beware that your website is only as good as it's ability to convert your best visitor to a customer. You can rank for all of the most popular terms related to your business however if your website doesn't convert the visitor to a customer you may not get the sale. Don't rely only on search engine optimization for success, continue to write effective sales copy for your site on a regular basis and test what works.

Also, to be sure that your chosen SEO specialist has done this type of work in the past ask them to contact a current or past client. Speaking with a past client can help you determine the type of work and service you'll be getting.