Need some help with SEO? Do your homework!!!
Do not shop on price because you don’t want a deal nor is this rocket science. It may be confusing to you but experienced web professionals get it, SEO is fairly simple and just requires some effort. Therefore, here are some questions to ask when doing your research:
- What type of techniques do you use to acheive rankings? (avoid companies that focus on getting you links)
- What type of risk is involved with this method? (see comment in parenthesis above)
- What will happend if our relationship is dissolved? (they should be able to get in, do some work, and get out, leaving you with the experience to maintain your optimized site)
- Can you show me examples of past work?
- What was the client’s ROI?
- What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect? (this is tough because it depends on your site, but that’s why you should ask, expect an answer that is relative to your site and details that show how your site’s increase is unique)
- How long until I start to see results?
- What would you expect from OUR end to aid your work? (Important because the answer is NOT ‘nothing’)
- What were some of your top search ranking acheivements?
- Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?
Look for a company that understands your business, marketing, technology, and the internet extensively. The biggest companies AREN’T ALWAYS best for the buck, but there is much less risk associated with your investment.
Related Questions
These three categories overlap but are not the same. A business owner runs a company, often for stability and profitability. A startup founder is building for exponential scale and disruption, often with venture capital. An entrepreneur is a personality type characterized by risk tolerance, a drive to improve things, and a compulsion to act, even without permission, resources, or approval. Many business owners are not entrepreneurial. Some of the most entrepreneurial people never start companies. Some startup founders are entrepreneurial; others are simply ambitious employees with equity.
It depends on the type of company. Foremost, everyone bootstraps, until they don't. Bootstrapping works when a business can be profitable early and doesn't require market capture at speed. Venture capital is for companies that need to capture a large market fast; where deferring profitability is the correct strategy, not a flaw.
No, and that conflation is doing real damage. Starting a business makes someone a founder or a business owner. Entrepreneurship is the set of behaviors exhibited by entrepreneurial people, which sometimes results in starting a business but is not defined by it. Entrepreneurial people exist in every walk of life (teachers, employees, artists, parents) and their entrepreneurial nature has nothing to do with whether they own a company.
They're looking at the application layer (the products built on top of infrastructure) rather than the infrastructure itself. Infrastructure companies are often invisible to end users by design, which makes them easy to overlook in consumer-oriented market maps. The companies processing trillions in transactions or verifying millions of identities annually don't show up in App Store rankings or product reviews. Their customers are other companies, not people.
Because it convinces people who aren't entrepreneurial to pursue paths they aren't suited for, without the resources, experience, or intrinsic drive to succeed. The high failure rate associated with entrepreneurial ventures becomes an economic drain when people who want the image of a founder (the recognition, the status) pour capital and time into ventures that were predictably doomed. Glamorizing entrepreneurship as universally great ignores the distinction between the personality type and the career aspiration.
Great article Paul – you really nailed it.
Thanks for the excellent punchlist! So many small businesses get bombarded with extravagant SEO claims – this list is a great resource to help filter the good from the bad and the ugly!
Kim Washetas
https://scoutforsuccess.com