How does one go about finding the right search engine optimization company? Well, not surprisingly, you may want to do a Google search. Conventional wisdom would have you believe that the first search result would be the best company--they must be the most optimized, right? Not always true. They may have been around longer, or just been lucky enough to have a URL with your search words contained verbatim. Click through all the results on the first several pages and evaluate each site for credibility. Do they look reputable? Are they promising unrealistic results: top three Google ranking immediately? Are their prices too low? Full SEO service involves a lot of man hours and usually a minimum of six months. Now that you have chosen a manageable sample--about five companies--you can delve into deeper comparisons.

One of the first questions to ask is whether the SEO company provides full or partial SEO services. Many companies only provide partial SEO. This means they optimize the homepage and nothing else. To fully reap the benefits of SEO, full site optimization must be done, along with quality link building through other websites. If a company is offering service at a very low rate, then often times they are only performing partial SEO.

Web 2.0 and social media are all about building and fostering a community around your site. This is critical whether you have a local or global business. With the right integration into popular social media sites like, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Youtube, your website will quickly build a loyal following of habitual users/customers. Additionally, as of 2007, search engines began to catalog and include these social outlets in organic search results. RSS feeds allow users to subscribe to your latest updates--continuous updates remind customers and search engines that you are active and relevant. So find out what type of social media packages your prospective SEO company offers.

Another way to gain recognition among search engines is to have syndicated articles that link back to your company blog or website. These press releases and blog posts will create backlinks and improve site ranking. But to be effective, these posts must also be optimized for distribution and maximum search impact. These articles should be targeted towards your business without seeming generic. You want quality content that will intrigue readers to find out more about your field of expertise. Because generating this unique content is time consuming, find out whether the SEO company offers content generation or if it will be your responsibility.

If your site targets a specific market, then submission to local directories is a quick way to gain notoriety. Services like Google Maps and Citysearch show local-targeted search results and then link back to your website. And with services like Yelp, (a community of users that review local businesses) customer interaction is more important that ever. Can you remember the last time you actually looked something up in that cumbersome yellow phonebook?

Backlinks are the holy grail of SEO. These one-way links from one site back to yours are highly weighted by search engine ranking algorithms. This is different from commonly used tactics such as reciprocal linking and link sharing—two-way link building is not nearly as strongly weighted as one-way backlinks. This is one of the most difficult and time consuming SEO tasks. But, it is not always a contest to see who can get the most. Your website's backlink strength is judged on quality and quantity. Because this process requires many hours of labor, find out approximately how many backlinks you should expect to receive and at what cost.

Do not be instantly alarmed if the company does not highlight case studies on their website (this may be a privacy issue). However, they should be eager to produce an in depth look at previous campaigns upon request. Hesitation to do this should be cause for concern. Any company who does legitimate full SEO should have an illustrious history of success. Along the same lines, any respectable SEO company should have a lengthy list of satisfied customer references eager to speak on their behalf. Since SEO is universally effective when realistic goals are set, every client should have experienced positive growth. Disregard companies that make outlandish claims at bargain prices. If a deal seems too good to be true, go straight to their customers and find out exactly what they received for their money.

At the beginning of any SEO campaign, many changes to your website will be necessary. This will require code-level access and often reprogramming of your site. Find out whether you will be paying for each tweak to your site, or if that is part of your SEO package. If the company is also doing website design then make sure an easy to use content management system (CMS) will be implemented in order to make updates to your site.

Quality SEO companies should offer extensive traffic analytics and keyword search query reports about every four weeks. If a company says they offer reports more infrequently then they are probably hiding or stalling on your campaign. It will be obvious when you are dealing with a legitimate company because they will be excited to show you the most current results and share in your cooperative success.

Compare the pricing for an SEO campaign with your other marketing endeavors. You should quickly realize how dramatically this could reduce your marketing budget. An SEO campaign offers the highest ROI at the lowest initial cost. Ask each SEO company how many man hours will be going into your campaign. Once you realize the time that is spent creating backlinks and managing your optimized website, investing in SEO marketing will be an easy decision.

As with any business, customer service should be a top priority. If you have difficulty reaching the company at the beginning of your service than it will only get worse. SEO campaigns require open communication between you and the developers. Ideally, a reputable SEO company will offer, email, phone and possibly live web support.

A standard SEO campaign lasts six months. Since a large amount of work is necessary to launch the campaign, a company will usually ask for up to half up front. But, you should never have to pay for the entire campaign to start. Ask about discounts and whether or not they accept monthly payment installments.