When looking to move up the rankings in a search engine, you’ll probably be looking into hiring an SEO company to help you out. Outsourcing SEO for small businesses is a very common practice because the benefits of SEO are proven to be very high but looking into it can be difficult in the first place. Here’s a few tips to help you make sure that you are avoiding some of the more major mistake SEO company services can make.

1. First of all, you need specific keywords. There is a place for general keywords but the majority of the time, you will want specific and unique keywords so that when people search for the product, your company stands out.
2. When a keyword is thought of, do a search for it and see what comes up from several different search engines. This can be extremely helpful to an SEO company in order to get good data.
3. Locations are not a bad idea to be used in keywords. For example, if someone is looking for an electrician in their home city of San Mateo, one of your keywords might be ‘electrical san mateo’ to make it a little more specific to your area.
4. A keyword should be three words or even longer. Generic phrases are not very helpful to a business trying to boost rankings.
5. Many times there is more than one way to say something depending on the area and the slang of that location. You can deal with this one of two way: either, use a suggestion tool to find out which word or phrase is more widely used and accepted or make keywords of both phrases. Remember that just because one way of saying something is the choice of phrase in a particular city, an outsider may be looking up the same thing in the same area, using the other phrase.
6. It’s always helpful to know the kinds of results that your result will be sandwiched between. You don’t want to hurt your brand by incorrect association.
7. Always know who is at the top of the results page. Finding out how they did it may help you to better your brand and website.
8. Don’t misspell. This is a really common one that should not be common. Be very careful and double check keywords, URLs, product names, brand names, location names, titles, your company name, etc.

If you find an SEO company that suggests anything contrary to the tips here, keep looking; that company does not know what they are doing. Finding affordable SEO companies is very doable. You just have to know what you are looking for. Your best best is to contact some of your business associates and find out who they use to optimize their websites. Chances are, if they are happy with the company they use for search engine optimization, the company will do right by you also. Word of mouth referrals are not only powerful because they are based off of personal experience but the company being referred knows that if something goes wrong for either business, they will be in contact with each other and the SEO company will not only lose one place of business, but two and all of their referrals as well.