Trust Your SEO Company with Your Eyes Open

Copyright (c) 2009 Ajay Prasad

In business we have to trust our service providers. SEO companies are our gateway to online success. But it's a good idea to keep a tab on what they are doing on our websites. Remember in the online world the website is your business store and you wouldn't want a wrong description or profile projected! Or worse you wouldn't want to be taken for a ride after paying those dollars!

Ask them for a keyword list and make sure that they get them right.

This is important. Take time off for it or you'll spend five times over trying to rectify the error. You may not know what words your potential customers are using in search engines to try and find a business like yours. That's why you've hired a SEO company in the first place. But instead of appearing stupid.

- Ask them for examples of your competitor's sites

- Ask them for a keyword list.

- Select a mixture of keywords. Remember that the single word keyword will be the toughest to optimize for and they may not be the most suitable. Though there may be 5040 searches for 'insurance' per day there is no point in spending money optimizing for it. 'Auto Insurance', or 'health insurance' may be more suitable. Some thing like 'dental insurance' may be more specific. However, "call center" (treated as one word) can result in huge business.

- Ask them the difficultly level of keywords. 45% or less are relatively easy to optimize for and higher the difficulty, the toughness of optimization increases.

- Ask your SEO company to prepare a list of existing web pages on your website which target suitable keywords. That way you will know which page targets what keywords and how many more pages of content will be needed on the website.

So you get to control the costs.

Your chance of appearing at the top of search engine results is greatly enhanced if you focus your website optimization efforts on two/three word phrases instead of single words.

Check your webpage title

Now that you know what phrases which webpage is targeting check the title of the l page. You can view it in the top browser bar when you open your website. Your page title on your home page is the biggest indicator to search engines of what your website is all about. The page title originates in the Meta Tags, which are not displayed in the normal view of your website. - A page title should be between 10 to 60 characters long including spaces. - It should preferably be in the format main keyword, sub keyword, brand name Remember that the company should optimize each page title on each page to get the best result. A random check is sufficient.

Get the Description Right

The description that appears below your URL in Google search engine is the metatag description that was included in the source code of your page. The Description should contain an enticing and informative snapshot of what the website is about and it should appeal to all search engines to appear. While Google takes a page description of 150 characters, MSN often takes the initial 100 characters from the Meta Description. The description should make sense, convey all relevant information about the web page and entice the reader to read the page. It is also worthwhile placing one related keyword phrase within the Meta Description. If possible add a phone number in the description metatag.

Web Page Names

If your SEO Company is a genuine company, they will most probably get it right. But step in here to ensure that the most important pages of your website can be told over the phone. After all it's you and your team who will conduct the business. It should not be too long to fit in the business card. There are times when it is technically not possible. Ask them for a redirect.

Let People Find You

Add your contact number and office address prominently. Let people know that you have an office space. Give visitors a number to enquire for business.

Consideration for the Media

You may not be a big company right now, but as your business grows and your brand becomes recognizable the press may decide to follow you. Create a media corner. Put all your press releases, speeches and videos over there all at one place. Keep adding the latest press release to the site. Post your press release on the site a day or two earlier that the official press release.

Some Questions to Ask Your SEO Company To Keep Them On Their Toes

What 'H' Tags are you using? H Tags or 'Heading Size' were originally introduced to aid the formatting of HTML documents. Because their presence indicates page heading with larger text, many search engines have decided to count this as a significant part of their ranking. Websites should not be designed just for their look and feel. Equally they should not be designed only for search engines. However, with a bit of thought and creativity, web pages can be built with both visitors and search engines in mind.

Are you using the keyword in Alt Tags? Alt tags short form for Alternative Tags were originally designed to contain the text to be displayed on web pages instead of images if a user's computer did not have the capacity to be able to display images. Alt Tags on images provide a great way of getting your keywords near the top of your pages without reducing your website readability. Alt Tags can also positively impact your internal website keyword linking. For a website to be successful, you have to create a new site entrance by adding Alt Tags to each image to appeal to search engines more effectively. With this, not only you are appealing to more users by using Alt Tags to your images, you will also be complying with website design standards for disabled users of your site.

Is the site navigation in text? As said earlier if your SEO company is genuine they will insist on text navigation and even navigation without menu. Generally, websites have their navigation links on the top or side of each web page. Unfortunately, many website navigation menus are image based. This means that search engines often won't spider the linked pages as they do with text-based menu links.

Are you using the keywords to link to webpages? In technical parlance the phrases used to link to a particular webpage is called anchor text. They are given a lot of importance by search engines

Are all pages on the website linked by some page? Is the internal linking 100%? Well, we do not like loose ends, neither do search engine because they have been made by human. Make sure all the pages on your website can be reached by some page.

Work In Tandem

No SEO company can work effectively in isolation. They need your feedback, your suggestions (off and on). Ask for a monthly report to check your website's keyword progress. Remember SEO is a long drawn process. Competitive keywords may be harder to optimize for. Once you reach page 1, the progress becomes slower. If you have found a good company all you have to do off and on is an occasional nip in the toes to ensure there is no scope for complacency.