There aren’t many industries that have as many shady professionals as our industry. Some industries that are similar in terms of shady people include pain clinics, casinos, investment bankers, and people on craigslist. Seriously I love what I do and the power of Google but I get discouraged more and more as I see some of the practices or sheer lack of knowledge in our industry. Not to mention blog posts like this. Shit all over SEO if you want. The truth of the matter is that it works. So much so that I have launched a new business in an industry that has been decimated by the housing crisis (Land Surveying) and SEO alone is keeping it slammed. The hardest part for any business owner is finding a good SEO consultant that knows their shit.

One rule to go by is never ever accept help from an SEO company that calls you. The whole point of SEO and organic search is to generate leads from users that are interested in your products or services. If an SEO company can not find leads form themselves they surely cant find any for you. It fact they had to find you somehow. The fact that they found you in the first place means they are looking for low hanging fruit, in other words they are looking for a website that is easy to rank so they can milk you for a monthly fee and with minimal work.

Second I would ask or referrals. A good SEO consultant will be slammed! Why? Because they generate a lot of business for their clients. In turn these clients are happy they made a good decision that directly impacted their bottom line. Especially in this shaky economy when a business owner makes a high impact decision that provides an robust ROI they are going to brag to their fellow business owners and that particular SEO consultant or company will be netting more and more word of mouth business.

Third I would do research to see if a particular company is doing SEO for more than one client within the same vertical. It is an inherent conflict of interest for an SEO company to optimize two different websites for the same keyword. A lawyer doesn’t represent the plaintiff and the defendant.

Secondly there will come a time when a good SEO consultant realizes he can do better for himself optimizing his own websites versus a website for someone else. This will ultimately depend on how entrepreneurial this individual is and if they work for themselves or a large company.

Lastly I would advise against hiring a large company that did not rank well for a large number of competitive keywords such as “SEO Company” “Internet Marketing” “Web Design” etc. The reason I say a large number of competitive terms is the fact that this type of intellectual capital is very hard to amass and scale up effectively. A smart SEO consultant doesn’t give out secrets and has to do a lot of research to stay up and ahead of the game. Recent changes to google’s algorithm a.k.a. Farmer/Panda update means that tactics that were effective a few months ago will now cause your rankings to decrease. An SEO Consultant at a large company with a large workload may not even be aware of these recent changes nor have ample time to adjust tactics.

PART 1 of 5

The buzz that everyone seems to be talking about is SEO. In other words Search Engine Optimization. What is SEO? SEO is the process of making a website the #1 result on Google for a certain search term. Why would you want your website at the number one spot? It’s a sure fire way to boost traffic to your website.

Is SEO for everyone? In my opinion Yes, but only if it’s cost effective.

It is also the final piece in a website.

If your cousin made your website when you first open up back in 2002, maybe you should consider a re-design first. And make sure that developer is creating a web site that is WC3 compliant, with NO Tables. Incept Design will be happy to check your website for you! Email your link to alex [at] inceptdesign.com.

After you site is aesthetically pleasing with nice gradients, shadows, and colors & the code is clean, you are now ready to take the next step.

Ready to decide if SEO is a good choice for your business.

Lets say you own a health SPA. Right now you are nowhere to be found on Google. Your in a back alley of the internet, tucked away.

Now say your average client spends $350.00 per visit.

If your website were in the top 5 results from Google for “Tampa Health Spa”, Chances are during the course of the month you will gain at least at least 2 clients per month due to the increased traffic to your website from people finding you on Google. And with that second client you can more than cover the cost of the SEO process. And any additional clients are increased revenue.

Some other things to consider. You will not jump from nowhere on the web to the first page of Google with a month. It will take anywhere from 2-6 months for the SEO process to begin increasing your rankings. Don’t spend an arm and a leg on SEO either. 95% of all “known” factors involved in Search Engine Optimization are available on the Internet and can be found by anyone who spends some time researching it. How the developer applies these known techniques is what greatly affects rankings.

The experts in this field do NOT agree 100% on which factors affect rankings or how much each factor affect rankings. Honestly the only entity that could know for certain would be Google and the individuals that write the actual search algorithm. And lastly anyone who promises you the #1 spot on Google in a week for any keyword is going to get your site banned from all the search engines. There are some things that you cannot do to search engine optimize your website.

To be continued….

Alex A