It is quite natural for any website owner to expect that their website will rank higher. Many webmasters spend hours each day to fine tune their website, so it will be highly optimized and rank higher in search results. When your website fails to rank in the first page, despite your best effort, it is easy to blame Google or any other search engine. However, you should know that no matter how pretty your website is, it may be poorly optimized for proper indexing. You should know that competition can be incredibly fierce for even moderately popular keywords. Many website owners are simply overwhelmed with the tasks needed to get higher rank. They may not have the expertise and skill to achieve their goals. This could be a good time to ask for help from actual SEO professionals.
There are hundreds of SEO firms out there and you need to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. In many cases, your first contact with them is when they call you. In this situation, you need to keep your wits and don’t agree with everything they say. Some of these firms may not be credible and they only aim to make a quick buck by performing standard SEO tasks for you. You should know that guarantees in SEO industry are often lies. SEO firms shouldn’t guarantee top placement with only limited budget and period. Major websites and companies actually spend millions of dollars for SEO campaign, if they want to compete for short and highly competitive keywords. If your small business has a few hundreds to spare for a single short campaign, you can’t expect the same result.
Some SEO firms may also claim that they have unique and proprietary SEO methods. In reality, these secretive methods may not be entirely legal. They may incorporate a few inappropriate tricks that can make their methods essentially become grey hat practice. SEO professionals should be able to explain what they are doing to your website. If your website is penalized by Google, firing the SEO professional won’t make things better for you. It is a golden rule in SEO campaign that we need to be prepared for disappointment. Because competition can be unexpectedly high, you need to limit your expectation. There’s no magic formula to ensure that you are able to achieve your goals. Somewhere out there, there could be some websites that are aiming the same spot, with more budget, resources and expertise.
One thing that you can guarantee is that you will need to allocate enough patience, time and hard work if you want to achieve even the smallest results with SEO. You need to be able to entrust the SEO consultant with your reputation and business. It is acceptable if you are not particularly familiar with any SEO terms and methods. The professional should be honest enough, so you won’t be given any kind of false hope. A trustworthy and reliable advice should worth its weight in gold.
