Tampa Search Engine Optimization – Get Ethical Internet Marketing from a Company You Can Trust

Although it is a revolutionary and exciting opportunity to bring in new business, search engine optimization has also become an opportunity for scam artists to trick companies out of their money. Because it is so new and always-changing, there isn’t a lot of good information or history out there for companies in the Tampa Bay area who are searching for an ethical company to work with. Just like in any industry, there are good and bad companies, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between an honest one and a slick sales trick.

To better help you when you’re looking for a trustworthy SEO, here are some “red flags” to look for:

1. Software programs – Many search engine optimization companies tout their proprietary software as being able to provide fast first-page rankings. What they don’t tell you is that this software manipulates search engines and tricks them using methods like cloaking, doorway pages, shadow pages, link farms, and other “black hat” techniques. Internet marketing practices like these are not only unreliable, but they can actually get your website banned from search engines, putting you back at square one in an instant. If you’ve come to rely on the leads from your website, this can be truly devastating.
   
   
2. First-place or first-page guaranteed rankings – When this option is presented with your search engine optimization plan, it may seem like a win-win situation. Either you get a high ranking quickly, or you get your money back. Sadly, this is simply not the case. No one can guarantee rankings. Search engines operate off of incredibly complex algorithms, and no one has control over them or even knows all of these variables. When an Internet marketing company offers this guarantee, there are a couple outcomes that are very possible: (a) They take your money and buy keywords through paid search results, which you could do on your own at a much cheaper rate, or (b) They get you ranking on obscure phrases that no one searches for. In either case, you’ll have spent more money than you needed to and probably won’t get much of an ROI.
   
   
3. Talk of “secrets” or “tricks” – Honest Internet marketing businesses don’t use tricks to achieve their goals. Hard work and integrity are the pillars of successful search engine optimization, and anyone claiming to have “the secret” is simply lying. Search engine algorithms contain up to 50 million variables or more, and no one – not even developers of the search engine – know all of these variables. Because there are so many factors that go into how rankings are calculated, there is no hard and fast trick to getting to the top, and anyone claiming to have one is probably planning to use black-hat techniques that can get your website banned completely.

Your Tampa SEO should be able to provide you with a clear, easy-to-understand, and detailed plan for the optimization of your website, and they should employ only time-tested techniques, not tricks. Ask your Internet marketing company for references and other websites they’ve optimized that have rankings you can see for yourself. If they hesitate or can’t provide these, then you should move on.

1. Disregarding content – Good SEOs know that optimized sites have well-written, original content. This content should be informative and clearly written, and it should speak to your company specifically. Your Tampa search engine optimization company should never disregard this feature, fill your page with generic writing, or require that you write it yourself. The reason many SEOs play down the importance of this aspect is because it takes hard work and experience to develop well-written yet optimized text, and they don’t want to put in the time or effort.
   
   
2. Long, Obscure Keywords – An Internet marketing company may tell you about all the first page rankings they have, but if these rankings are for long, unsearched phrases, they’re useless. Many SEOs optimize sites for keywords that are rarely searched, if they’re searched at all. These keywords are known as low-hanging fruit, and while they can be useful in some situations, your site should be optimized for highly searched terms, too.

Thorough search engine optimization takes both low-hanging and highly-searched keywords into account to get you the most leads possible.