When selecting a search engine optimisation company for your business, it’s important to be aware of the pitfalls

When embarking on the task of selecting the best specialist seo company in the UK, be sure to research them properly and don’t rush into anything.

Here is a list of helpful points to keep in mind when doing your searching and the service they should be offering.

Keyword Analysis – They should be offering to research your keywords that can drive traffic to your site and they must understand your business. Ask if they have carried out SEO for another company in your sector. Keyword research is the most important phase of seo.

Testimonials and client lists. Check how well their clients are competing in their online market space. If they have achieved good things for them, then they are probably worth their fee.

They should be offering to audit your site for technical issues, optimisation problems,eg. site maps etc. On page optimisation is still an important factor so they should be looking at the architecture of the site, layout, programming techniques,dynamic coding and good internal linking using good keywords.

Directory Submissions – To ensure proper indexing your website should be manually submitted to the search engines. Search engines do not approve of automatic submission and doing so can result in future problems. Companies advertising that they will “Submit your website to millions of directories and search engines for just $50 are to be avoided at all costs

Link Building – Some form of seo link building services should be offered, but check that they are not gaining links from bad neighbourhoods and dodgy websites. Inbound links should be relevant and from quality sources. The SEO company should provide a detailed link analysis and tell you where your competitors stand and what steps they would take to get links from topical sites, directories and social networks. It’s difficult to determine the number of links required, but the firm should provide competitive link research and analysis so they can prognosticate how many links you require for your keyword terms.

Will they be submitting news articles for you? This is a major part of building a robust seo strategy that will last. You can always write your own and get them to optimise them.

Social media optimisation is the buzz word now, but is very important. A good SEO company should not be ignoring this and can be a great opportunity to get direct visitors from social media sites like youtube and myspace.

SEO companies should provide a clear listing of the cost of each service that they will provide you on their efforts. Some SEO companies tend to forget this part, so ensure that these services are properly outlined and organized.

Some companies provide only SEO, but some also provide other services such as PPC, web analytics, multi-variate testing, e-mail marketing, social media optimization (blogs, videos and podcasts), link building and more. If you want a firm that does all more than just SEO, then ask them if they offer these extra services aswell. At the time of writing you can expect to pay atleast £500/month for a link building camapign and possibly upto £5000/month for a large ecommerce site.

Can they rank their own website? One of the first things you should look into is whether or not their site is ranked highly or not.If they don’t rank higher than the 3rd page, then maybe they should be dismissed.

Reports – It is always important to know how your keywords are performing. Ensure you receive monthly reports of your keyword rankings and link building progrmme. eg no of links and an inventory of where the links are coming from

Finally, when it comes to cost remember this! If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and if you pay the cheapest price, then you are probably going to get what you pay for.