SEO: Get It Right

The May edition of The Business Review North America is now live!

By: Tina Samuels

SEO can be a tricky thing to grasp, but there are tips on how to getting it right the first time without having to go back and redo web page after web page.

Here are some easy things to keep in mind regarding hiring the SEO assistance your business needs:

Don't Listen to Guarantees

SEO professionals that guarantee to get you on the first page of Google or promise things that they have no control over will not bode well for their professionalism. Or worse, they'll guarantee you first page for a very long tail keyword that you can get yourself with not much effort or cost.

True SEO professionals realize that no matter how hard they try, SEO is a complicated algorithm to Google and they will just hope for the best, using all their expertise to get you as high in the ranking as possible.

Be Wary of Free For All Link SEO

If the person or company you've hired to do your SEO touts the beauty of free for all links or random blasts to "thousands" of search engines, run far and run fast.

This is a useless maneuver that may even backfire and send your links further down the Google spiral staircase. Free for all links are the sure signs of an amateur or rogue SEO agent that doesn't know how to use actual keywords to get organic results.

Read related content:

• Understanding SEO in 2013
• Five Social Media Must-Dos for 2012
• Introducing Our SEO Expert Justin McGill
• Top Five Social Media Sites For Business

Don't Buy Into Secrets

If the SEO professional can't provide clear-cut answers when you ask them what they are going to do, or they tell you it's a "trade secret among professionals", this is again a bad sign.

SEO is not secretive and if they can't explain what they are doing, chances are they aren't going to do much. Many of these secretive SEO companies employ "black hat" tactics that use doorway pages or toss-out domains, which Google finds deceptive and gets to kicked off Google entirely.

Warning Signs and Red Flags

Any of these signs is a red flag that you need to keep your company far away from the SEO "professional"....

• Makes doorway pages on your site for links to their other clients
• Uses shadow domains
• Guarantees rankings
• Tacks up a fake WHOIS report
• Previous clients being removed from Google
• Gets plenty of traffic, but when traced it is from false sites and engines

SEO gets your website, your social media posts, and other aspects of your business at the forefront of the Google pages.

It is a great way to push your company in front of many more eyes and create new demographics for your business. It isn't necessarily hard to grasp, but can be tricky when you don't understand.

With these tips, you should be well on your way to getting the most out of your search engine optimization, something that stands to benefit your business over time.

About the Author: Tina Samuels writes on car insurance California, social media, and a variety of other business topics for the web.