Don't Sabotage Your Search Engine Optimization Company
The average search engine optimization company is in high demand, and with rising pay-per-click costs and growing exposure of SEO in the mainstream media, this is unlikely to soon subside. Unfortunately, many organizations that willingly embrace SEO as a marketing tool also unknowingly sabotage the efforts of the search engine optimization company they have chosen. What follows is a list, by no means complete, of some of the most common errors made by companies that can harm their SEO efforts.
Demand Rankings with No Changes to the Site
It is a common assumption that search engine rankings are determined by a magical formula rooted largely (or almost exclusively) in technology. In reality, long-term search engine rankings are generally achieved through an equal mix of technology and updated website content. An ethical search engine optimization company will usually turn down work when told that under no circumstances can any of the visual elements or content of a site be changed.
It is largely a site's content - from the text to the images - that allows search engines to determine what that site is about. That same content also helps other sites and directories to decide whether or not a site is worthy of a link (and link popularity is, of course, a major factor in rankings). Many companies do not want to hear this, especially after they have paid a sizable amount of money to a web designer. The bottom line? That site built entirely in Flash for which you spent $50,000 is not going to achieve high rankings for a variety of phrases without substantial changes that will allow its content to be indexed by the engines. The truth hurts sometimes - but so can the cost of lost opportunities.
Update the Website without Consulting Your Search Engine Optimization Company
A very common and innocent mistake can have disastrous consequences. It generally happens when a webmaster is updating a website, perhaps simply adding a press release or uploading a graphic. Accidentally, the webmaster saves an older version of the site over the new version, removing many of the elements that the search engine optimization company had added to achieve high rankings. This can result in a loss of positions for which the search engine optimization company, of course, is blamed.
Worse yet, since most sites are developed on a "test bed," damage can be done when the site goes live. Test beds are not intended to be crawled by search engine spiders, and so responsible webmasters include instructions in the site code requesting that spiders not index the site - the Internet equivalent of a "do not disturb" sign. The major search engines dutifully obey this request on the test bed site. They also dutifully obey when these instructions are accidentally transferred over to the live site during an update. As you might imagine, the results from such an oversight are somewhat less than ideal. Once again, the search engine optimization company generally gets the blame.
Since constantly accepting blame can be demoralizing, a good search engine optimization company monitors the code on all of its clients' sites on a daily basis, analyzes any changes, and quickly reacts if anything potentially harmful has been done. In this way the website can be repaired before ranking losses occur.
Link to Other Sites
Everyone that has a website has received at least one email requesting a link exchange. Unfortunately, this type of exchange defeats the purpose of link popularity, and engines are starting to take notice. Since inbound links are essentially counted as "votes" for your site, a simple trade-off between sites does not necessarily indicate that those sites are advocating one another. Worse, if you actively link out to a site that becomes penalized (and sites that seek reciprocal links are likely to be very aggressive in their optimization tactics) your site can become penalized in turn.
This does not mean that you should never link out to another site, especially if you believe that the site contains information that is of value to your visitors. Your search engine optimization company, however, should be given the opportunity to review any site to which you want to link.
