With so many companies offering their services to optimise and market your website, it can be very difficult to decide who is going to be the best company for you to employ. There are a number of questions which you need to consider:-
1) What is the company offering and for how much? - If it is £99 and they will optimise you website then submit it too 1,000 search engines then run a mile. This will be automated which a lot of search engines do not like. And how much time are they going to really give your business? There are of course business service providers who will offer to charge you £4,000+ per month. What exactly are you going to be getting for your money and who does their portfolio of present clients consist of. At that level of fee's you would really need to consult your ad agency or marketing department certainly.
2) What type of marketing policy do they have - This will take careful research for many companies make promises of top 10 rankings on their website. How can they make this promise when there is such a difference in how much competition for specific keywords there is in different sectors of business. A great deal of care is needed as the way some such companies achieve this for you is by using "Black Hat" techniques which can fool the search engines in the short term, but once the search engines have cottoned on, then you can find that you position rank falls or even worst your website can be dropped so you will not only have wasted your money on the marketing, but it will be incredably difficult to rectify unless you are have a completely new website registered and built.
3) What type of results are you looking for? - Are you looking for a company to take a look at your website and make recommendations about how to improve your website or a company that offers a range of packages to suit your marketing needs over a 6 month, 12 month or longer period.
4) How accessable are they? - Although this is the world wide web, distance can still be an issue, for if the SEO company is 300 miles away, how easy is it going to be for you to contact them or even have a meeting. Everything costs so unless they are based close to your trading area or have a more local office then you will be paying for the travelling either directly in your own journey or indirectly in the form of their fee's.
5) Are they a specialist service? - By this we mean are they offering services to a specific sector of business I.e Accountants, Solicitors, Property Sourcing agents etc. While this can mean that they do know the business sector they are dealing in, there is questions that would need to be answered.
6) How does their website portray the SEO/SEM company ? - Does their website have a comprehensive list of clients and do you know or have you heard of any of the companies? How current is their list? How easy is their website to use? What information is available on their website and how comprehensive is it? Is the information written in laymans terms or full of unexplained jargon?