Thu, 8 Mar 2007 14:14:29 by Jessica Faltot
Caveat emptor - Let the buyer beware has taken on a new meaning when it comes to selecting a search engine marketing company to handle your organic search campaign. More often than not, companies who are interested in Vertical Leap's managed search marketing services come to us after having been burnt or severely disappointed by other companies who sold them a bill of goods and delivered no results.
What might have worked once, does not necessarily mean it will work today. I prefer to view most of the complaints as being non-intentional by the provider. It may well address my point that the days are long gone when you could optimize once and be done with it. Today I find that there are too many companies out there they have not kept up with what it takes to successfully drive results for a client looking for organic placement and results.
For instance Web design/development companies who treat search optimization as an "add-on" feature to their design. Then there are the "SEO companies" who have a "great price" but in reality they perform cursory or a one-time task type of optimization, then put your organic campaigns on auto-pilot. They may send a report but they will do nothing else until the client realizes that their rankings have crashed. Then they charge more and say its out of their control, blaming the search engines.
To be fair, not all web design companies or SEO firms do this, but the problem is way too frequent and it hurts both the industry and clients who expect more for their money. I'm talking to more web design companies today that realize that they need to provide their clients with results and want to work with us to provide organic search marketing to their clients. Unfortunately there are still a lot of companies out there who still think that they can get by.
There are SEO companies who will charge you a minimum fee for optimization, but reading through their contract you'll find that if you want to make any changes to the campaign, adjust keywords for instance which requires re-optimization, there will be additional charges. If your company wants to track the results of their organic campaign, beyond just a standard overview report that shows how they progressed from one week to the next - well, that too will be an additional charge - if it's even available.
One of the biggest problems I see is that most "SEO companies" talk a good game but upon further investigation you'll find most of these companies have a fractured focus - handling pay-per-click, web design, logo's, e-commerce in addition to handling organic search marketing.
Demands of the market, competition, constantly changing parameters (algorithms) within the search engines, on-going strategies based on proven keywords and traffic, re-optimization, a steady build up of relevant links and additional content that will turn your site into a recognized authority within the search engines and accountability over time and at the level of detail that will enable companies to calculate their ROI and make future advertising spend decisions is a full time job. You want to make sure that you hire a company who remains focused on the organic campaign. Not a company with fractured focus.
So when researching what company you want to handle your organic search marketing campaign, you will be well served to remember Caveat emptor - Let the buyer beware because not all SEO companies are created equal.
Jessica Faltot
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