Website owners who don’t live and breathe search engine optimization themselves should still be aware that there are 3 things you need to know before hiring an SEO company. As a start, find out what services are necessary. The second step is to understand the difference between a good and bad provider. The third thing is to know how long the process will take, and thus get a better idea of the required team size and costs that will be incurred.

All components (read services) can be categorized as either onsite or offsite. The essential onsite work begins with keyword research and traffic analysis. Existing pages will be modified and new content created based on the keyword list.

There will be some website design and functionality changes involved, with fonts modified and scripts removed or added to make the site easier to use. The web host may be changed or the package upgraded. This will be done to enable faster page loading and other SEO-friendly options such as Class-C IP addresses.

This much detail was essential here because many providers tend to throw such big picture concepts out of the window when faced with the task of pushing up search rankings for a client. Instead, they resort to quick-fix but unethical methods like stuffing pages with hidden text, cloaking, redirections, etc. They will show search engines keyword heavy pages while users get to see something altogether different.

Avoid such services, and go by a rule of thumb that any onsite service that makes the website better for visitors is acceptable. As for offsite work, the list of available services will be confusingly large. Forget everything else for now, because all it really needs at first is a link building campaign, a presence on all the major social networks, and a blog.

In this case too, some providers may try to apply short-cuts to get fast results. This means using link farms and big chains of sites and blogs whose sole purpose is to provide links. The golden rule here is to make sure all link acquisition techniques will focus on getting links from sites that actually send visitors. Also try to focus on sites that happen to be in the same sector, including competitors.

Lastly, there is the question of the time needed to achieve results. The result here means the site pages should start ranking in the top 10 for the keywords chosen. If it is a large site with hundreds of pages and established competitors in the same space hogging the top results, then it will require a team effort for at least a year to get past the others and close in on first page rankings.

If the site is small (5-10 pages) and the competition is not so tough, the job can be done in 3-6 months without a big team. The point, again, is to stay away from providers who claim to help clients reach the top 10 in a month. This is a laborious process that needs talent and hard work. Unethical practices will only result in the site getting banned and pages removed from the search index. Assuming the 3 things you need to know before hiring an SEO company are now clear enough, it is time to look around and find a provider willing to work along these lines.

You can find a brief summary of the things you need to know before hiring a SEO company and information about a reliable provider of Internet marketing services, today.

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