| Most businesses are barraged companies who e-mail or call them offering to “optimize their web site”. It’s a real quandary for most people to whom all the companies all sound alike. Here are some guidelines that you might use in your evaluation.
Terminology: First of all, you have to understand what we mean by the word “keyword”. SEO is all about keywords. If your prospective client goes to Google to look for you, what he types is your keyword. If you are a plumber in Akron, your keyword is “plumber Akron”. Ask the sales person to be specific on what they are going to do and how much they are going to charge. There are two specific areas where their efforts can be of value: 1. Modifying your web site pages to include your keywords in the appropriate places. 2. Creating quality incoming links. An incoming link is another web site that lists your web site. Being listed on quality sites, like Google Maps, Local Yahoo, Chamber of Commerce, help your ranking. If you pay to have your site listed somewhere, it usually doesn’t help and could hurt your ranking. When a company offers to “submit your web site to hundreds of directories, don’t do it. You need to know where your site is being listed. The company I work for in Clearwater, Florida www.MySmartMarketing.com, usually charges about $300 to $400 do basic web site Search Engine Optimization. Social Marketing is a whole different animal. This usually involves setting up blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts, doing regular postings and making sure that your postings are keyword oriented and linked in order to drive traffic to your site. Social marketing is very labor intensive, and usually requires a healthy budget. Social marketing companies usually charge between $500 and $1500 a month for their services. You can do Social Marketing yourself, but you probably won’t get much results unless you are well versed in the science of keywords and backlinking. Get a referral from someone you know who has had good luck with getting results from their web site.
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Mar
07
Mar
07