10 Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Consultant - Part-2

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3. Do you adhere to search engines' webmaster guidelines?  
You want a consultant who strictly abides by Google's publicly posted webmaster best practices, which specifically prohibit 12 common SEO tricks, including automatically generating spammy content and adding bogus hidden text and links. If a candidate doesn't follow those guidelines, your website could be relegated to a dismally low search results ranking. Or, worse yet, Google could ban it from search results altogether.
Bing and Yahoo also post webmaster best practices that consultants should confirm they follow.
4. Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo? 
If the candidate answers yes, Fox warns, "Turn and run in the other direction as fast as you can." Although it's impossible to guarantee a number-one ranking on any search engine, she says, some unethical SEO consultants do make such bogus guarantees.
Consider it a red flag if the candidate claims to have an insider relationship with Google or any other search engine that will get you priority search results rankings. Only Google, Bing and Yahoo can control how high or low websites appear in their search results.
5. Are you experienced at improving local search results? 
Appearing in the top local search engine results is especially important to small brick-and-mortar businesses trying to attract nearby customers, Rand says. You'll want a consultant who has expertise in local SEO techniques.
If your website is optimized for what's known as "local SEO," it should appear when someone nearby is searching for keywords that are relevant to your business. To achieve that, a consultant should add your business's city and state to your website's title tags and meta descriptions, and get your site listed on Bing, Google and Yahoo's local listings, which are online directories of businesses that cater to a specific geographical area.




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