On most days, we love what we do. We help companies improve their online image and rank higher on search engines. In general, higher rank means higher inquiries and more sales. It all seems so easy that any one can do it. Unfortunately, SEO is becoming increasingly hard. SEO is not unlike many other industries that were flooded with so-called experts.
At the turn of the 20th century, every town had a “drug salesman” selling the latest remedies to cure your cold or cancer. Then, pharmaceuticals became a little more complex and that market became dominated by companies that actually understood the complexities of the drugs and also the potential bad consequences of mixing one drug with another.
In much the same way, SEO can go very wrong for companies if they are not working with a company that understand all the moving parts that impact SEO. Lets look at a few of those components.
Content.
SEO content is king. Having the right content, the right density of key words on the right pages all while still having content that makes sense to the reader. This means your SEO company should have seasoned SEO writers on staff, writers with journalistic integrity and experience writing for a national and international audience.
Meta Data, Alt Tags, Description Tags
In about 90% of the sites that we work on, even those designed and built by big NY design firms, none of the meta data has been touched. Despite what the pundits say, meta data still matters. Beyond yahoo, Google and Bing there are 1000s of search engines that rely on this meta data to determine what is on a given page. So, your SEO company should have developers on staff that understand a wide variety of platforms and technologies.
Directories and Search Engines
Although still largely a manual process, submitting to these important directories and search engines is a crucial part of any strategy. This means that your SEO company can’t have a two guys and a dog on their team. It would be impossible to do search for more than a handful of clients.
If you SEO company does not have these three crucial elements of developers, writers and SEO consultants that have been in the business more than 5 years, then you are risking potential sales and your companies brand.
