Serious, professional search engine companies only employ ethical methods. However, you can never be too sure. You might have asked them every possible question and have seen many references but there will still be a shadow of doubt that they may not be quite right. Either way, there are a few things you can do to keep an eye on them:
- Check your site for hidden text or links to other sites. You can ask your webmaster to do that but often highlighting the entire content with Ctrl+A does the trick.
- Check to see if they have placed a hidden link to their own site or to one of their clients'. Sometimes, well hidden links are hard to uncover unless you've got some HTML skills. Ask a friend or another company from time to time to check on your site and see exactly who you're linking out to.
- See what their linking strategy for your site is. If all they're doing is adding your site to free for all link sites, guestbooks, dropping your URL in logs etc then they're not doing a very good job and they're tarnishing your site's reputation.
- Some SEO companies own directories and sites and use them in their clients' interest. However, this can also mean that if you decide to terminate your contract with them, they can, and sometimes will, kill the links that produce the search engine performance your site enjoys. Go through some of the sites linking back to your site and check whether they may be owned by the search engine optimisation company.
- Ask them to provide a monthly report not just with traffic patterns, rankings etc but also conversion rates and ROI.
You will have the peace of mind of having some control and knowledge regarding what is being done to your site. You will also have the chance to put your foot down as soon as something goes wrong and prevent serious damage to your website such as being banned from search engines. You will probably not need to keep a close eye on your SEO company but it never hurts to have an ace up your sleeve.
What To Do When Your SEM Is Not Performing?
This article was first published on 26 August 2004 and does not necessarily match current events or the current opinions and views of bigmouthmedia ltd.
