How to Know If Your Search Engine Optimizer Knows What They’re Doing
Many people get into Search Engine Optimization believing that they know what they are doing, without having some of the basic requirements to make good on their promises. Their work is fairly easy to spot if you know what you are looking for.
The truth about search engine optimization is that anyone can do it, providing you have enough time to do the necessary research, the right resources to build inbound links, and enough knowledge of web coding that you can make changes to the website without breaking it.
They Didn’t Do Their Research
If your optimizer hasn’t done enough research about what works and what doesn’t, you may see some of these tell-tale signs on your site:
Hidden Keywords – This is when the words on your website match the background color so the visitor can’t see them, but search engines can. Not only is this ineffective, but it’s considered to be a “black hat” technique which is frowned upon by the search engines.
They “Submit” Your Site to Search Engines – Don’t fall prey to optimizers who will submit your site to “thousands of search engines!” There are only two search engines that count (Google and Bing.) Almost all of the other search engines out there pull their results from the Google and Bing. And as far as submitting your site – it’s rarely necessary to do this, and almost never more than once. Search engines will find your site whether or not you tell them it exists.
Reciprocal Linking – Creating links to your site from other websites is a major part of optimization. However, reciprocal linking (link trading or link exchanging) is not the direction you want to take. While these types of links are fine in moderation (and when they make sense for your site), they should not be used to increase your search engine ranking. The search engines are on to this trick, and even though Google has come out publicly against link exchanges, many SEO firms are still applying this technique – to the detriment of their clients.
They Don’t Have The Right Resources
This is where years of experience make a huge impact on the quality of your optimizer.
A good search engine optimizer doesn’t work alone. In fact he or she may have a phone-book-thick list of contacts and websites that have been collected through the years. These valuable contacts are used to help build up inbound links from bloggers, social media mavens, and anyone else who has an influential voice in your industry.
When the right resources are in place, you will see traffic coming from all sorts of different places including blogs, article websites and social media.
They Don’t Know About Website Coding
Because on-page optimization requires changing the source code of your webpage, it’s important that your optimizer can get in and get out without messing up your site. If they lack experience in this arena, you’ll know right away because your web pages won’t look right, fonts and colors may change or be added, or absolutely nothing on your site will change at all.
If your optimizer can’t perform on-page optimization, which includes things like adding new links between pages, adding or removing keywords to affect the density, then you’ll be missing a critical chunk of the optimization process.
They Don’t Get Results
Finally, and most obviously, if you’re not getting more traffic to your site, then your search engine optimizer probably doesn’t know what they are doing. How would you know? If your phone is ringing more, and you’re getting more emails you might be on the right track. But to know for certain, your optimizer should be installing Google Analytics on your site. If they’re not installing some kind of analytics, they may be trying to hide something.
If you’re wondering how well your optimizer is doing, give us a call and we’ll tell it to you straight. Getting results is what we do and we guarantee it.
About the author: Christianna Connell is President at future-ink. Christianna's 18 years of experience with web programming and client relations make getting a website a pleasant experience, while ensuring a solid site designed to meet our clients' goals and expand their business. 
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