Six Great Ways to Pick an SEO Company that Will Get You a Great Listing on Google

It has been said that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that is the feeling that most website owners have after they've been experiencing the huge frustrations of trying to get their online businesses to be displayed in the top ranking pages of Yahoo! or Google. Your only option as a website owner who must have a good ranking or else go bankrupt, would be to hire a really great SEO company that specializes in getting a small business like yours a really great ranking at all costs. Here are six ways to make sure you are picking the right company to put you in the league with the big boys of the internet world:

1. IMPLEMENT A GOOD BACKGROUND CHECK ON YOUR POTENTIAL SEO COMPANY This step includes typing the company name in Yahoo! or Google and seeing what kind of negative feedback comes back on the SEO business that you are interested in. I would say that if there are more than six credible instances of irate customers who used this SEO company and were not at all satisfied with the service they provided, definitely start looking elsewhere.

Just make sure you are looking in the right places to get this credible info, because it could be misinformation put out there by the SEO company's main competitors. If you can make a contact with a previous customer, by all means do this first. A first hand testimonial from someone with a similar online business like yours who had a good experience with the SEO company is the best research tool of all.

2. MAKE SURE THEIR OWN SITE IS VERY HIGH IN GOOGLE'S RANKING PAGE If an SEO company cannot get their own business ranked at least in the top ten on Yahoo! or Google, they won't have a shot at helping you get even a decent rating in one of the biggest search engines. Any really competent SEO company will be listed in the top five rankings under "SEO businesses", so start with those five and work your way down your list and find a really good SEO company that fits your budget.

3. ASK FOR A LIST OF CREDIBLE REFERRALS Again, this is a great research tool you must use to figure out the respectability of any decent SEO company. If they refuse to give you at least three website addresses of businesses they have optimized web pages for, then you must cross them off your list. Even if the SEO company says that they cannot give you any names because of confidentiality agreements, do not take "no" for an answer. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why former customers should be kept a secret from future clients.

4. NEVER USE AN SEO COMPANY THAT USES AUTOMATED SUBMISSIONS No credible SEO company would ever submit your web pages using an automated software. To get a great ranking at Google, for example, there are strict submission guidelines that Google insists on for every page submission. If you use any one of these automated submissions software, you could get a permanent ban from Google, something no business can recover from.

5. IF THEY SAY THEY CAN GET YOU A #1 RANKING AT GOOGLE, STAY AWAY FROM THEM You might think that this claim from an SEO company would be a good thing. Unfortunately, there is not one SEO company around today that would be able to make that claim with even the smallest amount of validity. Even when the keywords that the SEO company is optimizing falls into the category of "rarely used", there is no way that any company can guarantee you a #1 rank. So when you hear that claim coming out of a customer service rep's mouth, immediately back away from doing business with that SEO company.

6. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR If an SEO company you are looking into does not charge very much at all for search engine optimization, there must be a good reason for the low cost. Incompetence on the part of the low cost SEO business is generally the reason that a company cannot charge the same rates that a more professional SEO organization can for its superior service. You must be aware that paying a lower fee for search engine optimization will usually mean that you will get a far lower ranking than you would if you went to a far more expensive one.

So before you take out that business checkbook, make sure that you have followed these rules for deciding exactly who should run the very important search engine optimization techniques for your precious web business.