Don’t Hire An SEO Consultant Unless You Do These 3 Things

Succeeding online takes more than great marketing skills. Even if you’ve mastered paid search and online advertising, you still need to focus on getting your site listed high in the organic rankings. Doing so creates an ongoing stream of targeted traffic. In order to achieve success in this area consider using an SEO consultant with a proven track record. This is often more affordable than people think and pays huge dividends.

Once you’ve determined that achieving top rankings needs to be a priority, starting and SEO program is easy to do. Begin by using an experienced professional who can guide your efforts towards that activity that can generate the greatest return. SEOconsultants will help you to make the most of your optimization dollars and improve overall results.

Getting the most from your SEO consultant requires a number of considerations. I have found that the most productive engagements around optimization and SEO all have these same criteria in common. By adhering to these principals, mutual expectations are set and each party has a clear understanding of what is being delivered by whom.

The first step to succeeding with an SEO project is finding a credible source. There are many people out there who claim to be search engine optimization experts but have nothing to show for it. Find a legitimate company, ask for references, or find someone who has a proven track record and can demonstrate authority on a the topic of SEO. A good bet is to find someone who has achieved number one rankings for their website or the web sites of their clients.

The next step with your consultant is to agree on what specifically the consultant will be doing for you. Is this consultant going to provide a review and analysis or are they going to provide a specific plan as well? Understand and know what the deliverable will be so you aren’t disappointed with the result. Many consultant type relationships are ineffective because consultant and company aren’t clear on the work that is being performed.

The last step is to plan for implementing the suggestions made by your SEO consultant. Where most companies fail after an engagement with a consultant is by not implementing findings. The key is to start this process of assembling an implementation team even before you engage a consultant. This ensures that the team buys into implementation suggestions and that you’ll be successful changing important aspects of your website for optimization purposes.

Organic rankings are an essential part of any search engine optimization effort. To succeed online you need to consider how to continually improve and expand the search engine optimization of your website. Begin with a well experienced search engine optimization consultant and agree on deliverables. Have a clear understanding of what the consultant plans to deliver and when. This ensures a productive working relationship that enhances your rankings over time.

Michael Fleischner is an author and SEO consultant. To learn how you can Improve search engine ranking, follow Michael on Twitter at @mfleischner or learn more about Michael’s SEO training program at MarketingScoop.com.

8 Proven Link Building Techniques

Every website owner knows there is no question about it, the more links to their sites, the higher their rankings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN will be. Here are eight ways site owners can get those links.

1. Requesting links: it’s time consuming but it does work. If you have a site with good content, you may be able to get some one-way links. Generally, however, you will need to reciprocate.

2. Submitting your site to directories can result in your obtaining a lot of links in a relatively brief period of time. If you can get listed in dmoz.org, you may get an immediate rank boost. No other free directory is as important, but those with high Google PR, like the-big-brain, will also help your site.

3. All website owners should write and/or buy brief articles and submit them to article distribution websites. Each article should include an author biography (with your name and website URL), that will be run with the article. That way, every website that uses the artcle will generate a link. It is not uncommon for a single article to be picked up by 500 websites, thereby generating 500 links for the author’s website.

4. Press releases: you can write your own news releases or pay to have them written for you. Either way, be sure they include links to your websites. There are services that will send out your press releases to a few news outlets for free, or numerous outlets for a fee.

5. Unlike the other kind of writing which can generate links, blogging is very simple because you can write about nearly anything related to your website, and good blog posts need not be very long. All webmasters should have at least one blog, write a minimum of one post a week, and link from the blog(s) to their website(s). In addition to short articles, many bloggers post link exchange offers.

6. Many website owners have picked up lots of links from their listings on Facebook and similar sites.

7. Offer well written, informative articles to selected bloggers. By including an author’s box, as you would with any other kind of article, it is possible to pick up dozens of links on sites (blogs) likely to be read by people likely to be interested in your website.

8. Useful, relevant posts in guestbooks and on forums and blogs, with your URL in your signature, can produce many links with little effort. But, do not spam. Post only when you really have something of value to say.

Note that buying links has not been listed; and for good reason. Google and the other search engines discourage link buying and many search engine optimization professionals believe that webmasters who buy links may be subject to search engine penalties. The eight link building suggestions above are effective, and will not earn webmasters the wrath of the search engines.