5 Tips for Choosing an SEO Company for Your Small Business

Every business owner or manager at some point in their career has been confronted with the challenge of getting more traffic to their company website. Inevitably when budgets are tight and advertising dollars are scarce, they often look to SEO as a solution.

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is the is the practice of increasing the visibility of website in the organic or non paid search results that appear in search engines. This is a daunting task no doubt. Even for seasoned professionals as myself, everyday the rules seem to change. How well your site is structured is often referred to as on site or one page SEO. The onsite SEO of your website plays an important role in how much you'll pay for PPC advertising as well.

Over the years I have not come across many Business Owners who have been successful with their DIY approach to SEO. More often than not, they end up making things worse by not understanding the difference between reciprocal and organic backlinks, or duplicate site content etc. A website with solid SEO will actually start earning SEO value as well. Ever wonder why some domain names only cost a few bucks while others command thousands? The answer my friend is SEO value!

Let's assume you've already realized that you need to hire a professional to handle your website SEO. Let's review a couple tips for choosing someone to manage your Small Business Marketing and SEO.

1. Trust your instincts! If the offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. If the SEO company is pressuring you to close the deal, or seem flippant explaining basic strategies to you, chances are they're more interested in getting your money than producing results.

2. You get what you pay for! SEO services and pricing vary greatly as does the level of service you'll receive. Your site will actually be "docked" ranking by the Search Engines of black hat or improper SEO strategies are employed. You'll often find these practices done mostly by offshore companies that offer basement discount pricing. You're looking for legitimate SEO strategies... there are no shortcuts!

3. Set a budget and stick to it... for the long haul. SEO doesn't happen overnight. It takes months for website to climb up the search engine rankings. Especially if you're a new website or domain name, there are millions of websites similar to yours that have history on their side. Pick a budget you feel comfortable committing to for six to nine months minimum.

4. Communicate! Choose a SEO company that has experience with Small Business Marketing in your industry. They will be more understanding and be more helpful when communicating their strategies to you or explaining challenges. As your SEO improves, you should always be communicating new goals for keyword rankings

5. Get off your butt and help! I saw this tongue and cheek but I would rather work with a Business Owner who is involved in the process vs. one who just hands it off to me. The business owner is the expert in their field, and they likely have access to valuable resources that the SEO company does not. A perfect example is trade publication websites or association websites. Reputable websites within the same industry provide a strong endorsement of your website if they list or link to it.

Do your research and talk to other business owners or even ask for recommendations from the SEO companies you do consider. With a little due diligence on your part, and a willingness to commit the time and budget necessary, before you know it you'll be climbing the ranks!

An Executive Level Marketing Professional, Christopher Drewa has over 10 years of Online Marketing experience working with leading Brands in the Consumer Packaged Goods, Direct Marketing, and B2B environments.

In 2011 he founded http://www.onlinemarketingdetails.com/ to empower Small Business Owners with the knowledge and resources to use Social Media Marketing, SEM, SEO, and Affiliate Marketing to drive traffic, generate leads, and increase revenue online.

His passion for Small Business Marketing and Development is measured in the results he achieves with his clients and team members.

Christopher currently resides in Los Angeles, CA and works with clients across the country.

3 Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

If you have an online business, there is no getting away from the fact that SEO is one of the most important aspects of any website. No matter how innovative your company is or how cutting edge your products are, your sales and overall revenue will remain in the toilet unless you can achieve a high search engine ranking. Some businesses desperately try and use illegal black hat techniques. While they gain instant gratification in some cases, search engines always catch up with them and eventually penalize such websites severely. Using black hat methods is clearly an SEO mistake and here are some others that must be avoided if you want your company to succeed and be seen online.

Ignoring Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text you see in hyperlinks on any web page. If you want to experience high rankings you need to build anchor text links on your site. Anchor text helps search engine spiders understand what a particular page is about. As search engines view clarity of content favorably, it goes without saying that anchor text is necessary for a better SEO ranking.

An example of anchor text is NFL and this leads you to nfl.com. You should also pay attention to the words which surround anchor text. Having 'NFL' anchor text in the middle of an article about knitting will show search engine spiders that the anchor text is actually irrelevant. You should always have a handful of anchor text phrases in mind which relate to keywords you will be using on your site.

Lack of Patience

Contrary to what some get-rich quick schemers tell you, getting to the top of search engine rankings and staying there takes time. For example, you may have 50 anchor text links while your competition has 4,000 on average per website. Clearly, it's tempting to play catch up and add hundreds of links overnight but this doesn't help your SEO ranking. If you do so and fly to the top of the rankings, you will not be ready to stay there. You should focus on increasing your current links by around 20% a month. As you will be creating a relatively small number of links, ensure that they are all relevant. You'll find that many of your competition's 4,000 links are irrelevant and don't rank on search engines.

Poor Link to Content Ratio

While it's important to have a large amount of rich content, this will not do your site much good unless there are an equally huge amount of links coming into your website. Lack of inbound links equals a lack of traffic which renders the content irrelevant. Search engines take into account the number of links coming into your website and compare it to the amount of content you have on the site. Websites with a low link to content ratio will not rank well. Therefore, build links along with your site's content to ensure a greater level of traffic,

While there are a myriad of SEO tactics that can be used to boost your search engine ranking, you should be looking for longevity and stability rather than a meteoric rise to the top of the rankings which you can't possibly sustain. Learn from the above mistakes and give your company a fighting chance of being successful.

Jason Kay recommends reading SEO service reviews to help you choose the best SEO service for your needs.