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SEO Mistake #7 – Outsourcing Your SEO the Wrong Way

If you’ve spent any time online with successful small business owners, you’ll know that you shouldn’t hire the first SEO company that offers to take thousands of dollars and guarantee you a #1 Google ranking for Wonderful Wubber Widgets.

As a savvy business owner, you’ve taken the time to research each SEO company you’ve considered, including reading their reviews on industry websites and comparing notes with your colleagues. At least, that’s what you should do.

Making wise SEO decisions goes beyond just finding the right company. While making the right hiring choice is crucial, your leadership and presence during the project is even more important.

Getting Started On the Right Foot

Before you ever hire an SEO company, you first need to educate yourself. Read the Google webmaster guidelines. Find out what Yahoo, Ask and Bing expect from website owners in terms of best practices.

Ultimately, the responsibility for making sure your website follows the rules lands on your shoulders. If your site gets banned from a search engine, it is you who will suffer the consequences, not the black hat SEO company that disappears into the night. Here are some tips to ensure that you choose the right company:

1. Check the search engines for reviews of the company you’re considering hiring.
2. Ask the company representative for a list of happy customers that you can contact.
3. Discuss the tactics the company plans to use to promote your website. These tactics are NOT secrets; they are part of your website’s marketing plan and should be discussed, much like you’d discuss construction methods and building materials if you were building a house.
4. Ask for referrals from your colleagues who have demonstrated SEO success.
5. Review the company’s portfolio of sites they are managing, looking for signs of improper tactics. For example, if a site has a bunch of keywords listed at the bottom, stay away from whoever is optimizing it. Also, if a site doesn’t appear on the first page of any search engines for any relevant keyword phrases, stay away from it’s SEO company.