How to not get ripped off by a search engine optimization company. A quick test.
I recently put together a white paper that went into great detail on a lot of different checks that someone with little to no knowledge of SEO could do to make sure they're not getting ripped off. After some internal review, we thought it might have been a bit too in depth for the audience we were looking to target.
So I'm left with about a dozen pages of information I had put a lot of time and effort into. So as morning approaches I've decided that I'll try to pull out parts of this document in a series of blog posts. If you're working with a search company and you're not sure if they're really doing their job, feel free to shoot me an email and I'll send you the original document - it's complete with specific questions you should be asking and what you should be hearing in the answers.
With that in mind, here's the section of my unpublished white paper titled "Link Building".
Link Building
Link building is the process of building more links back to your website – this is a critical factor in achieving a top ranking in competitive industries. In very general terms, having more links is a signal to search engines that other sites view yours as important (important enough to link to you!), and you will have a better chance to rank for your keywords if you have also done a good job with your on page optimization.
Search engines like links.
Visually, link building can be thought of like this. The red pages linking to Page 1 tell Google that the page is important. Page 2 doesn’t have any pages linking to it (or vouching for it) with Google, so it likely won’t rank as well because Google has less reason to see it as trustworthy and valuable.
I've found that link building is the most misunderstood service by potential SEO clients. I can't tell you the number of clients who have chosen to go with a cheaper company for a long term SEO contract whom I've asked, "Does this company do link building?" And they responded, "No." This, to me, is horrifying.
Unless you have a site that's continually attracting links on its own, or your industry has so little competition that you don't need to gain new links, any ongoing contract with a company should include link building.
If you want to get an idea of how many links your site has, Yahoo's Site Explorer tool can give you an idea of how many links they have in their index at any given time (this varies over time, but it gives a good general indication).
- Yahoo is nice enough to share their backlink data.
Another useful tool is Majestic SEO's bulk backlink checker. It has a larger database than Google, but it, too should only be used as a general guide. Just add your root domain (no www - just yoursite.com) and run the report.
This report is one that I suggest you run if you have a company that doesn’t seem to be getting results. Too many companies simply receive a report each month that shows their rankings and traffic. What is your company doing to get you useful traffic? If you want better search rankings and traffic, you’re going to need links.
About Adam Henige
Adam Henige is Managing Partner of Netvantage Marketing, an online marketing company specializing in SEO, PPC and social media. Adam heads the SEO and link building efforts for Netvantage and has been a contributing blogger for industry publications like Search Engine Journal and SEOmoz.
Tags: google, how to check your backlinks, link building, majestic seo, picking an seo company, questions to ask your seo firm, reputable seo companies, ripoff seo, seo companies, seo ripoffs, yahoo site explorer
