Seo Services – What you need to know before you choose an SEO Company
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a specialised industry. The search engines constantly change their algorithms and companies need to change their strategies and keep inline with webmaster guidelines. Some SEO Companies use what is called "Black Hat" Strategies. These strategies try and beat the Algorithms and can get you high rankings on the search engines, However once the search engines catch onto these sort of things they can usually mean that your site will get a penalty and your web listings will drop dramatically.
One of the main things when looking for a company to work on your rankings is to make sure they are keeping within the webmaster guidelines. This doesn't necessarily mean that you will get high rankings but there is a better chance that when you do get good rankings then you will keep them no matter what updates happen in the search engines.
SEO Companies are all over the place at the moment so you have a wide range of choice in which company to go for. The best way to make your decision and make sure you are choosing the right company to work on your search rankings is to find out where their website is listed on the search engines. For example if you are in Glasgow, go onto www.google.co.uk and search for "Glasgow SEO services" generally the companies on the top 5 spots of these sort of listings will know what they are doing. At the end of the day if a company cannot get these sort of listings for their own site, what are the chances that they will get those sort of listings for your own website.
Having said this, it doesn't mean that these companies are the right ones for you. They could be using black hat techniques to get their site there. The only way that you will really be able to tell is if you talk to them. The best way to do this would be via email, I would always suggest that you use email when talking to SEO companies because this means that whatever you discuss you will have all the information in writing from them, this covers you incase anything goes wrong further down the line. A true seo company will have you sign a contract anyway with everything covered in it and all eventualities that could happen, along with everything you have discussed, like pricing, time frames, what they are going to do etc.
This will then also cover you for anything they are supposed to do that they haven't done. Also a legititmate SEO Company will also provide you reports of all the work done for you, Like links posted, ranking reports and either fortnightly or monthly updates, that way you can keep an eye on things that are getting done and should be able to see an increase in the rankings of your website.
Hopefully this brief overview of SEO companies will help you make your decision on what is the right company for your website.