The title pretty much says it all? How do I know who to trust for SEO/SEM services? We've looked at a couple of different companies and even done trials with a few. Most of them simply ended up spamming our URL on random forums and blogs. This is great, I guess, for SEO purposes, but ends up giving us the type of publicity we aren't interested in. We want legit growth based on the services we offer - not junk postings all over the Internet! So, back to my question - how do you know who is reputable in this vertical?
SEO regular work. If you look for give result and get paid system, then you will end up with Xrummer works. Go for regular SEO service, observe improvement, then you decide to proceed or not.
Can you be more specific? What type of company should we be looking for? Can you make a recommendation?
Ask SEO companies for their portfolio. The keywords used for these clients and you can personally check their current ranking. Use backlink checkers to see what kind of links they created for these clients of theirs.
Check out our signature links for alcohol delivery, we have been working with this company for over 2 years now They dominate the alcohol delivery sector - just type in Alcohol Delivery into Google, or 24 hour alcohol or beer delivery or, well the list goes on to well in excess of 1000 quality keywords. Together with great Google Places listings as a healthly Facebook gathering. We are quite happy to help you, we are UK based, London, so speak English pretty well as well, lol! Our link is also in this signature Enjoy
research the company before you hire them. try to understand about their reputation. also, send them an email with your Q's and see what type of answers they come up with. some jo blo companies will not answer to your email at all. for some, its the trial and error method of finding a good company. once you find a good company, stick with them
As a blasphemy, may I suggest you go about doing the SEO work yourself? I don't mean do everything by yourself but you at least set the direction. For example, if you want articles in article directories, hire someone who does that. If you hire a SEO company, they mostly work for the very short term and like you mentioned, they will spam your URL everywhere. This is not really the kind of SEO you need to promote your blog. This is with every SEO company. Anyone who claims otherwise is just lying. Remember how JC Penny was slapped by Google? Read up the story (as usual, I like the one in NY Times). Their SEO company had been spamming JC Penny's link all over on dormant blogs with absolutely nothing to do with the company. If one of the retailing giants got this kind of service, I doubt you will get better.
The ones that ofer realistic time frame and results People who say 1 month i get you pos1 first page bla bla is simple BS ... NOBODY in SEO can give 100% guarantees this is the 100% fact about it ...
SEO is definitely an art, not a science, and there are an awful lot of people and companies selling SEO services who have read an ebook and think they know what they are doing. If I were going to hire a firm to do SEO for me, I would have written guidelines on what I wanted and what I did not want, and make sure they agree to follow the guidelines. And I would require periodic reports telling me what actions they had taken, and the results so far. It is up to you to keep tabs on what the company you hire is doing, just like you would keep tabs on any firm that was doing marketing for you, or any other types of consultants.