Lately, search engine optimization (SEO) has been a hot topic among webmasters, web developers and internet marketers.
Search engine optimization, commonly known as SEO, can be challenging as it is a constantly evolving art, and what worked before may not work today. According to Wikipedia: The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients and by employees who perform SEO services in-house.

A cursory search on Google will find nearly 200 MILLION sites containing the term SEO and over 207 million for 'search engine optimization'. Clearly, this is a sought-after subject, and companies around the world are competing for their favorite keywords or keyword phrases.


Are companies claiming to be experts in getting websites ranked high in Google and other search engines scams, or legit businesses? The answer is both. However, most of the ads claiming to be experts should be looked at with a cautious eye. There are literally THOUSANDS of individuals and companies that claim to be search engine optimization specialists, but most of them are merely scams or using "black hat" methods to increase page rank in the search engines.



Clearly, it is important to do proper research. Some things to look out for:

anybody claiming to get you to the first page of Google in 5 minutes.

True search engine optimization takes TIME. It's impossible to get to the top of Google immediately The closest one can come is paying for ads that appear at the top of page one -- but those aren't search results.

anybody guaranteeing you the #1 position on any major search engine for any particular keyword.

There is no way to promise the top spot, as every website in the world is jousting for it. This scam is often pulled off by getting a sit to the top of the ranking for a search term that's not going to be searched on. Suppose you had a site called 'Sally's Hunting Guide Service.' It would be quite easy to get to the top of the list for "Going hunting with Sally" if you chose to... but how many people would type that in? Odds are the phrase "Sally's Hunting Guide Service" would also be easy to optimize for, which would get those that already knew about you, but again, that's limited. To gain new customers, you'd likely want to be towards to top of "hunting guides" or "hunting trips," especially in your local area ("Arkansas hunting guides" or "hunting guides Little Rock" for example).

they let you tell them what keywords to optimize for.

A true professional will research the best keywords for you, and optimize for those. They may not have the information immediately, but this should be the first step in their process. One key mistake people make is spending all their resources going after the wrong keywords.
Example; Penny's Petunias is a tuba band in San Fransisco. If the SEO expert doesn't research, he may optimize for "flowers" (which also happens to be notably competitive ) or "coins". The search engines will likely view the site as being about coins and flowers as well -- UNLESS the SEO expert works to optimize for "tuba bands", "San Francisco tuba bands", etc. It would also not be wise to target "band" as that could be very competitive and have multiple meanings.

Make sure you do your homework before hiring someone to optimize your website. It may be a good idea to not ask direct questions at first, and let them talk about their plan for you And remember, like get 'rich quick schemes', if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.