Are Your Clients Looking to Buy SEO?

Things To Look for Before You Buy SEO for Resale

Many web designers have told us that their clients are looking to buy SEO. Before you refer a client to an outside firm or choose to become a reseller for another company, it’s imperative to make sure that you’re dealing with an honest, ethical company. When evaluating an outside consultancy as an Internet marketing partner , keep the following in mind:

• Only buy SEO from a company with a code of ethics. Many SEO firms looking to sign up resellers will use spammy, “black hat” techniques that will not only get your client’s sites banned from the engines, but that will also ruin your reputation. Ethical SEO firms will be open and honest about the techniques that they are going to use, and should give you an education on the basics of organic search engine optimization before taking your money. If the company hides its practices under veil of secrecy, or if they seem fishy or stingy, they probably are not the sort of company you want to do business with.
• Don’t buy SEO from a company who will guarantee you top ten results. Nobody, not even the most respected, experienced SEOs, has a crystal ball that will tell them how Google, Yahoo, and MSN will rank and evaluate websites, and you can’t buy your way in to the natural search results. Companies offering guarantees will most likely be targeting keywords that get very low search volume. Before you even consider buying SEO from one of these firms, ask if you will have complete authority over the keywords that they’ll be guaranteeing placement on, and ask if you’ll get to see search volume data on each phrase.
• Don’t buy SEO from a company that claims they will get you to be #1 within 7 days. Implementing effective SEO is a time consuming, rigorous process. It is impossible to do thorough keyword research, competitive analysis, SEO copywriting, and link building in a week. If a company is going to rush the process, the results will be ineffective and possibly even black hat in nature. And remember—Even if you get top organic listings in a short period of time, if the work isn’t well thought out or if it doesn’t use a best practices approach, the listings may disappear just as quickly as they were obtained.
• Only buy SEO from a company that values conversion just as much as placement. Having a top spot on the search engines is meaningless if visitors who arrive at the site don’t take action. The best SEO firms will focus on conversion rate optimization so that visitors are inspired to take action. Make sure the SEO firm creates copy with a strong call–to–action, and that includes value statements that eliminate fear and doubt. The firm from whom you buy SEO services from should value effective design just as much as a perfectly written meta description tag.

By keeping the above in mind before taking the leap and buying SEO, you can make sure your investment is worthwhile, and that you’ll actually be creating value for your clients.