If you are about to appoint someone to help you search engine optimise your site, then you are entitled to know what they are going to do. After all, you are probably paying quite a lot of cash for these services. But what are the right questions to ask?

Most will start with the on page review and make the changes. As long as that’s completed, there’s not much to ask about. Where most of the cash is spent is in the long term on link building and that’s where some dirty work can come into play from the less reputable companies.

Ask your proposed SEO provider what type of link building they will be doing. Hopefully they will mention posting to blogs and article writing. If they are posting to blogs, ask who’s blogs. Make sure they are not just leaving spammy comments on blogs. If article writing, who is writing the content and how much effort do they put into checking the articles are published with the links in place? You both have a vested interest in making sure this works. Ask to see some examples of these for previous customers and if they say they can’t because of confidentiality, be suspicious.

Some SEO experts will depend mainly or totally on some form of link exchanges. This is where you must be cautious. You should ask how they find people who are willing to put the links on their site. There will be two answers, either they are paid links or they are reciprocal links.

If they are a paid links, then they should be responsible for making sure that the link stays live for the agreed duration. The problem is if they are reciprocal links. If you are not having the link placed in your site, where is the link going and how are they finding these people?

This is where some sneaky work can come in to play. Some SEO experts have lists of sites that accept automated link exchanges. These third party sites think they are reciprocal linking to your site, but eventually notice large numbers of inbound links from the same useless directory with outgoing links to different sites. All you are actually paying for is for them to submit your links via an automated script. Quite often they don’t even bother to submit you to the correct pages within the links directory. Not only does this mean you aren’t on a themed page, but it is also wrecking the site owner’s links directory.

So how can you spot those with dubious links building against those with better reciprocal link building? Again, ask them for some examples of where they have placed links for customers and ask them where they provide the reciprocal link back. Again, be wary of those not willing to tell you - they are probably hiding something.

Once you know where they place links to other sites, have a look around site. Does it have a home page? Is the site listed in search engines? If not, then there’s a dubious practice or two in their outgoing links. Are there lots of near identical pages on this site of theirs? Have a look on the sites that are linked to and see if you can spot where their customers’ links are. Are they all on the same page or are they categorized?

Be very careful about how your paid SEO expert runs a link building campaign, otherwise it could be a very expensive way to get a lot of wasted links.

Keith Lunt runs several successful marketing sites and advises different business on marketing strategies. He recommends his customers to visit Promotional Gifts and Items who supply a huge range of promotional materials - from promotional keyrings to printed pens, golf umbrellas and a lot more.

tips for higher page ranking

Posted on March 27th, 2009 by 1prank
Filed under: Uncategorized