A whole lot of companies claim they do search engine positioning. It’s very difficult for the average non-technical person to understand what’s important and what’s not because optimization of – at least the main page of a Web site – is so important to a site’s positioning results.
Because the search engines change their rules and regulations all the time, you need to find someone you can trust to do a good job and keep you out of trouble. If you make a wrong move, you can be banned from some search engines for life.
The stakes are high.
Questions To Ask When Choosing A Positioning Company
- Is the company’s contact information highly visible at their Web site?
- Do they answer the phone or get back to you quickly when you leave a message?
- Do they respond in a timely manner to e-mail?
- Do they answer your questions directly or do they talk in circles and skirt the issues?
- Did you find them from a page of links (a link farm) for affiliate programs? If so, the site where you found the positioning company will take NO responsibility. They’re just trying to make a quick sales commission on whatever you eventually purchase.
- Do they mention words like doorway pages, hallway pages, cloaking? If so, steer clear.Using cloaking, doorway pages and other deceptive practices can get you banned.
- Do they use redirects to get to your site? If so, they can get you banned.
- Do they host your positioned pages at other than your own Web site? If so, you lose all your positioning should you discontinue their services (or they go out of business). Plus they are CLOAKING, or redirecting, or doing something that is deceptive in the eyes of the search engines.
- Is the price too good to be true? $29.95 will get you nowhere except $29.95 poorer. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
- Do they provide ongoing monthly service that includes reporting? A one-time effort won’t get you or keep you at the top, and regular reporting is critical to your analysis of where you stand.
- Do they claim instant and magical results? If so, they are probably doing something like cloaking that will eventually cause you more problems than you can imagine if you want to keep your domain name registered in the search engines.
- Do they simply send you a few metatags with a directive to upload? If so, nothing with come of your efforts. Even if they then resubmit, metatags alone will achieve little or nothing.
Guidelines You Shouldn’t Violate
- Never, never fall for a positioning pitch you receive from someone with an e-mail address like pooky123@hotmail.com. It can’t possibly be a legitimate, knowledgeable source.
- Beware of Guarantees for attaining specific positions – Nobody doing legitimate positioning (without tricks and deceptive practices that can get you banned) can guarantee you top positioning in any search engine.
- Caveat Emptor – buyer beware. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. You rarely get MORE than you pay for and sometimes you get considerably less.