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By Olatunji Adetunji

SEO Search Engine Optimization — Search Engine Optimization, SEO. Image Credit: innobyte.com

The following are the normal SEO criteria an individual or company should look out for prior to hiring or performing search engine optimization. 1. Initial Consultation & Keywords: Prior to making any SEO related changes to your website most SEO companies would assign to you a technical team who will review your site closely so as to make sure that they don’t come across any unforeseen problems at a later stage. Next, the SEO specialist assigned to your project would conduct a customized research to collect the necessary data from which he or she will create a list of targeted keywords that will attract a lot of traffic in your business vertical. The SEO specialist assigned to work on your website will consult with you to finalize the best keywords for your website. 2. Unique Content Creation: Once the keywords are finalized, the next step is to get quality SEO content for the keywords, hence balancing between the keyword density and relevancy on the page. They will use their training and experience to create highly effective content that is original and unique. They will also make use of your current website content whenever possible. The content that is created will not only be search engine friendly, it will also be professional enough to market your site to the human readers without losing readability. All these will be done in close consultation with you so that the essence of your website is not compromised. 3. Website Redevelopment: Your website will be redeveloped completely to ensure seamless integration of the new, optimized content to your website. In this process the entire website will be subjected to a thorough revision – the architecture, graphic text, meta tags, alt tags, internal linking pattern and the sub-pages will be modified to the necessary extent. In all these the SEO specialist will ensure not to disturb the design, integrity and the essence of the website. He or she will only employ SEO techniques that are ethically sound. 4. Link Building Development: Besides site optimization, link popularity or link building development is another important aspect of your website’s search engine success. You should have links pointing to your website from other popular websites with good page rank. Most SEO firms will take care of link development as well. They use a number of highly effective link building strategies including:

One-way links from content relevant directories and websites.
Reciprocal link exchange with content relevant websites with good PR.
Directory submissions to both free directories and fee-based directories.
Article Syndication for creating link popularity.
Blog reviews for contextual link building.
Reciprocal link building.
Targeted link purchases.

5. Search Engine Submission: Most SEO company do not stop with site optimization, but also take care of the submission of the website to all major search engines and directories including – Google, Yahoo, MSN, DMOZ (Open Directory) AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, HotBot, Teoma and ASK. They also submit to fee-based directories such as Yahoo Directory, LookSmart and a number of other top-class directories that will bring a lot of targeted traffic to your website. We will also create and submit Google sitemap and Yahoo sitemap so as to ensure easy indexing in these search engines. 6. Search Engine Optimization Reports: Most SEO firms have highly streamlined reporting procedures that will generate a ranking report prior to the commencement of the optimization process and this report will indicate your website’s ranking in various search engines. This report will be sent to you and this will serve as the point of reference which you can use to compare the results of their optimization. After the completion of the optimization, they will send you the monthly reports via Email so that you can keep track of the progress. Besides generating monthly status reports, they will also monitor your website on a weekly basis to make sure that your website is not dropped out by any major search engines. The SEO Company’s team will be in constant touch with you via phone or email and will also be happy to receive your call or email anytime to respond to any questions you may have. 7. Fees: Fees will depend on how competitive your keywords are. That is, from a request quote approach, or you pay a stipulated sum for a job description with respect to a time frame and in most cases this type of fee approach is on long term contract bases. 8. Guaranteed Ranking: Most search engine companies offer value for your money through their service level guarantee for your campaign but really there is no such thing; they use this as a marketing tactic. Why? This is what people like you and I want to hear, an assurance that you will get this position, which cannot be so, because the search engine companies don’t own the search engines. On review of your website by the SEO specialist and correlating the keyword and competition involved, he will be able to give you a realistic guarantee that is specific to your requirements (realistic only means a time frame in this context and not a search engine position in other misused cases). Your SEO specialist will certainly be able to meet any SEO guarantee that you get anywhere else online, if not outdo such guarantees, because with such guarantees one needs to be wary about their quality and how the guarantor intends to provide such SEO services.

Olatunji Adetunji is a SEO specialist working with SEO WEB ANALYST® (http://www.seowebanalyst.com), a SEO consulting firm providing affordable seo services and free training on seo web marketing techniques and trainings.