Protect Yourself
Unfortunately there are many fly-by-night Internet companies that promise "#1 ranking" and a thousand other things; they fail to deliver the goods, but never fail to take your money. While there is nothing we can do to stop these snake oil salesmen, we can help to educate you on a few key points.
When choosing a company to handle your online advertising and promotion, you should be wary of anyone promising quick results or #1 placement. Very often these promises are backed by what is termed in the industry as "Black Hat" tactics. These are tactics that are considered illegal to the search engines and can do serious harm to your business: once you are banned from the search engines, your business is effectively wiped from the Internet. SEO should be considered a long-term process, and reputable SEO firms will not promise you #1 rankings... at least not overnight.
Keep in mind that SEO can be either very cost-effective or very, VERY expensive for small businesses. If you want to be number 1 in Google, you may have to pay for thousands of hours of an SEO professional's time because it can require significant time to do all the on-page and off-page optimizations. We like to point out that the 80/20 rule applies to SEO, just like nearly everything else. You can spend a nominal amount of money to get 80% of the benefit of doing SEO. That last 20% of result can cost you dearly, however. Only you can decide what budget is right for your business, but we advocate starting with the fundamental elements of SEO and working your way up from there. This is why our program gets you in the door at a very cost-effective rate and then allows you to add features from there if your budget allows.
Don't just take our word on this matter. Start your own research into it with these links and make up your own mind, so that no matter what company you decide to do business with, you do it with your eyes open and with a good idea of the questions to ask to protect yourself.
