How to chose an SEO, PPC company?

Hi,

Trying to find an SEO company to help my with SEO, Social Media and PPC (Adwords) advertising.

I have already met with 3 companies, but have found that they all have the following shortcomings:

1) They like to focus on very few keywords. This doesn't work when you have a website with lots of products.
2) Each company seems to have its own speciality. One will deal with PPC, another with SEO etc.
3) Each company has different ways of doing things- One will make phantom links, one will make additional websites, one will do copyrighting etc.
4) One of them even told me that google has changed recently and there is a whole new way of doing SEO which most companies don't know how to do.

I do understand that each one has their own way of doing stuff, but as this is a new field for me, how do I know what to look out for and who is advising me correctly?

Additionally, in general, I find the following confusing:

1) With so many companies out there, how does one find the best one? I am thinking that the best way is just to contact all the companies that appear on the first page of google (as they obviously know how to SEO themselves). Is this the right way to find reputable companies?
2) Each one charges a monthly fee for their work - I do understand that some initial results can be clearly seen (like you can see campaigns created on PPC etc), but how does one gauge what actual work is being done?

Just looking for some basic guidelines on how to approach this, and any advise is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

That all sounds like crap.

I do the ppc for my company and I use as many keywords as necessary to have an effective campaign. My colleague handles all the SEO, but from what I've learnt those companies aren't doing it right. You don't want to use black hat techniques and get blasted by google a few months later and never rank for anything.

I'll pm you with our details.

alkit said:

4) One of them even told me that google has changed recently and there is a whole new way of doing SEO which most companies don't know how to do.

I do understand that each one has their own way of doing stuff, but as this is a new field for me, how do I know what to look out for and who is advising me correctly?

Additionally, in general, I find the following confusing:

Click to expand...

He is talking about the penguin "over-optimization" update.

Basically Google hitting back at sites that do too much SEO. Yes. We know all about it

Quite simple, ask for a few companies they have optimized before =) I can vouch for Qwikslver, they aren't fly by night SEO experts like most of companies out there...

Larger sites with more less contested keywords are seriously simple though, it becomes a headache when you try and rank for simple phrases:erm: Take a few of Solid Computing's products as an example, I'm on the first page most of the time and I haven't spent a cent on SEO but that's due to my keywords not being highly contested. Drop me a pm, I might be able to point you in the right direction

Qwikslver said:

That all sounds like crap.

I do the ppc for my company and I use as many keywords as necessary to have an effective campaign. My colleague handles all the SEO, but from what I've learnt those companies aren't doing it right. You don't want to use black hat techniques and get blasted by google a few months later and never rank for anything.

I'll pm you with our details.

Click to expand...

Agree, and OP sounded so black hat.

Get their results. If they're good their clients will be well ranked for their industry.

Black hat techniques go unpunished, a large only retailer has in excess of 7 domains currently boasting duplicate content. Even small retailers have started registering multiple domains for single companies offering identical products and services...

Doesn't make it right though but it seems our SEO market is flooded by useless content and spam. I had a call from a company claiming to be the largest SA search engine(u guessed it) who also offer SEO and one of their key tactics is building sites for their customers with the sole purpose of linking from these sites to existing sites. Another example is the mass amount of one post wonders who have been spamming myBB lately, these posts are generated locally:erm:

Moral of the story, every second noobs claims to SEO experts, choose the wrong company and you could see your site removed from the listing(which will kill a company generating their revenue online). Make sure you get a basic understanding of black hat before hand as most of them are unaware that they are using black hat. Also stay far away from international companies claiming to know everything about a market which doesn't exist here.

IMO, get a quote from Qwikslver, anyone charging more then that plan on ripping you off.

Qwikslver said:

That all sounds like crap.

I do the ppc for my company and I use as many keywords as necessary to have an effective campaign. My colleague handles all the SEO, but from what I've learnt those companies aren't doing it right. You don't want to use black hat techniques and get blasted by google a few months later and never rank for anything.

I'll pm you with our details.

Click to expand...

Please PM your details to me as well... it seems our website's ranking has gone down the drain and Adwords is all that is keeping us active at the moment.

Ipwn 4 said:

Another example is the mass amount of one post wonders who have been spamming myBB lately, these posts are generated locally:erm:

Click to expand...

lovelynamu said:

Selecting the SEO or PPC company Lucknow or in any other location is much easy. This is most necessary to have the all recard about that company. What is the past record , what strategies are going to apply and other many more...

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problem solved!