Your web site is up, functional, and looks good. You stare at it with much satisfaction until you look at the stats. Suddenly it occurs to you…you need visitors. Not just any visitors will do, you really need targeted interested visitors. What better way is there than to hire a search engine optimization company?

Search engine optimization is not performed by search engine optimization specialists that hold the secrets protected by a mysterious society. Search engine optimization is all about relevance and quality. How relevant is your web site? Does it provide new, useful, quality content? Does anybody link to it? Why do people need to link to your site?

Relevancy is often determined by wordage. The first objective of your selected SEO company should be to optimize the content of your page. Simply speaking, they need to improve the density of the keywords and key phrases while assuring that the wordage is formatted properly and that the site does not appear to be "keyword spamming".

Paragraphs will be altered (yet not removed), title tags improved, image tags added or modified, and user/robot navigation enhanced. From that time forward, links will be the name of the game.

Google puts heavy emphasis on links. It is their belief that a web site with more web sites linking to it will provide higher quality content. Usually, they are correct in this assumption. Therefore, your SEO should provide multiple ways to improve your link population. The best package will include a combination of link exchanges, article distribution, and press release distribution. Make sure they are sending your content to multiple locations and not only the locations they own.

Be ware of snake oil. If your search engine optimization company is proposing "propriety processes" they are full of (clear throat) creative substances. In short, there is no such thing. Search engine optimization is all about Relevant Content, Fresh Content, and Relevant Link Population. Anything beyond that is simply snake oil.

Now, certainly your search engine optimization company could use "proprietary software" (which our SEO firm does as well) but this is simply an application that the company custom built to simplify one of the techniques. To review, those techniques are improving the content relevancy, fresh content, and/or link population.

Deciding on a budget is also important. Unless your company is an upper small business (generates over $5 Million annually) or middle market/large company, you should expect to pay somewhere between $100.00-$1,500.00 a month depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, your site's size, and other variables.

Up front cost can range from $1,500.00-$10,000.00. To decide whether or not its worth it for you, simply ask yourself if you can afford it and if the proposed service makes sense. If you don't understand the SEO process, don't pay until the search engine optimization company has clearly explained it.

Don't buy into the short term guarantees. If someone promises you "next day number 1" or advocates falsehoods such as "we have a special relationship with the search engines" you can simply feed their proposal to your hungry shredder and shred away a lot of frustration.

Follow your gut, have realistic viewpoints, and check references. Always require disclosure of techniques and disregard all SEO companies that try to sell mysteries and snake oil. If you do this, you will enjoy a strong relationship with a good company that truly has the interest of your success at heart.