What to look out for and what to avoid from a future partner who will provide you with SEO services in your restaurant.
SEO means ” website optimization for better search engine results”. Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your website and save time, but there is a risk of damaging your page and your reputation. Make sure you research the potential benefits as well as the harm that an irresponsible SEO can do to your website.
Many SEOs and other business consultants provide useful services for website owners, such as:
- Review the content of your website or structure
- Website development technical tips: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, using JavaScript
- Content development development
- Managing online business development campaigns
- Search keywords
- SEO training
- Specialization in specific markets and geographical areas.
Please note that the Google search results page includes organic search results while paid advertising (symbolized as “Ads” or “Links”) is on Google and has no effect on your site’s presence in our search results. Google does not accept money to include sites in organic search results, and there is no cost to having your site appear in organic search results. Google provides free resources such as Webmaster Tools, the official Webmaster Central blog as well as discussion forums that can give you information on how to optimize your site.
Before you start your search for an SEO, it is worthwhile to first be informed and get acquainted with how search engines work.
We suggest you start here:
Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web
If you are thinking about hiring an SEO, the sooner the better.
The right time to hire an SEO is when you are thinking about redesigning your website, or planning to start building a new website. This way, your SEO can ensure that your website is designed to be search engine friendly. However, a good SEO can also help improve an existing website.
Some useful questions to ask an SEO:
- Can you show me examples from my previous job and get some success results?
- Do you follow Google’s guidelines and rules?
- Do you offer online marketing services or business advice on organic results?
- What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timetable? How do you rate your success?
- What is your experience in my field?
- What is your experience in my country / city?
- What is your experience in developing international sites?
- What are your most important SEO techniques?
- How long have you been doing SEO in business?
- How can I contact you?
- Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the rationale behind them?
There are SEOs who provide valuable services to customers, and there are SEOs with manipulative practices, such as overly aggressive attempts to manipulate search engine results unfairly. Practices that violate our guidelines can lead to a negative ranking of your site on Google, or even the removal of your site from our index.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
A common scam is to create domains that redirect users to a web page using misleading redirects. These areas often at best belong to the SEO who claims to work for you. However, if the relationship ceases to exist, SEO may point to another domain, or even promote one of your competitors. If that’s the case, you’ve helped pay for the development of a fully fledged SEO site. Another illegal act is to load your pages with keywords. SEO promises that this will make the page more relevant to more searches on GOOGLE. This is false, rarely individual pages are relevant to a wide range of keywords.
More insidious, though, is that these pages often contain hidden links to other SEO clients, and these pages spread the site’s popularity to other clients, which may include sites with immoral or illegal content.
If you suspect that you have been deceived by SEO in some way, you can report it.
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles allegations of fraudulent or unfair business practices. If you are outside the United States to file a complaint against a company please file at http://www.econsumer.gov/.
- Be wary of SEO consulting companies or web services that send you emails out of nowhere.
- No one can guarantee a # 1 ranking on Google.
Beware of SEOs who claim to guarantee rankings, claim a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise “submission priority” to Google. There is no submission priority to Google. In fact, the only way to submit a website to Google is through our page Add URL or submitting Sitemap through webmaster tools, something you can do yourself at absolutely no cost.
- Be careful if a company is secretive, it should clearly explain what it intends to do.
Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates misleading or misleading content on your behalf, such as pages or “disposable” domains, your site may be completely removed from the Google index. Finally, you are responsible for the SEO behavior you are going to hire, so it’s best to make sure you know exactly how it intends to “help” you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain any changes they have made to your site.
- When not to work with an SEO.
Avoid SEOs who talk about the power of “free for all” links, linking to popular programs, or submitting your website to thousands of search engines.
These are usually useless practices that do not affect your ranking in the major search engines – at least, they are not considered positive and sponsors.
- Choose wisely.
Find out before choosing an SEO, do some research on it. Google is one way to do that, of course. You can also search for some of the stories that have appeared in the press, including the article on aggressive SEO practices . Although Google does not comment on specific companies, we have encountered companies calling themselves SEOs who follow unacceptable practices. Be careful.
- Be confident and know exactly where your money is going.
Although Google does not sell the best ranking in our search results, many other search engines combine pay / per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with promotion in its search results their web. Some SEOs will promise to rank you high in the search engines, but this may actually be part of paid advertising and not search results. This deception does not work with Google because our ad is clearly tagged and separated from search results.
- What are the most common misconduct of a website that you are likely to encounter?
- What are some other points to look out for?
There are some warning signs that you can spot in an unreliable SEO. It’s far from a complete list, so if in doubt, you should trust your instincts.
Stay away if you have any doubts about the following:
- holds “shadow” sectors
- puts links to its customers on backlinks
- costs keywords
- does not distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
- guarantees high ranking in big keywords that you will get anyway
- Works with many aliases or fake WHOIS data
- gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
- has previously supported or owned domains that have been removed from the Google index
Source: Google.com
