Throughout your search for competent, professional SEO providers, you will be destined to come across countless companies that really do not live up to services you might expect. Sometimes, the agency itself is simply too novice in its approach, while others are not actual SEO providers but rather scammers seeking to steal your information and profit. Even with professional companies, you may experience times where frustration sets in due to the action (or inaction) of the hired company. Knowing of and expecting such an experience goes a long way in preventing the problems in the first place, and we have a few suggestions any webmaster should consider before hiring a company.

Create A Contract/Agreement

Large and professional SEO providers are quite used to the concept of operating under a given set of parameters, so it is no shock for them to receive a contract or agreement for review prior to accepting a job. In this contract, you will want to be sure to indicate the agreed upon time of completion, the cost and any other specific requirements you and your site need. While most contracts are not needed when working with astute companies, it never hurts to have a framework in place that can be relied upon later if a problem arises.

Help! My Site’s Been Compromised!

Some webmasters hire a company to do SEO work, only to have the “company” promptly change the user credentials in an attempt to take over the website. Perhaps just as bad is an SEO company that does in fact provide the work as deemed but installs malicious software on the server that allows backdoor entry and potential exploitation of your site’s storage and bandwidth. NEVER provide your control panel or main user access credentials to any company and make sure that the FTP, mySQL and all other website-related accounts have different passwords than the main account. By doing this, you will always be able to restore access and purge any potentially hazardous material from your domain.

I’m Not Seeing The Results

If after a period of time you have not been able to see the results, then the worries around the effectiveness of your SEO job begin to haunt you. Generally speaking, SEO jobs are not immediately effective as the algorithms of search engines make it a tedious process in improving your rankings. However, you can keep tabs on aspects such as page performance and search engine saturation, as these should improve rather quickly after the work has been done. Pingler offers a tool, the Search Engine Saturation Checker, which will help you quickly see how many of your pages are showing up to sites like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Watch for Guarantees

Some guarantees are good, while others are tell-tale indicators of malfeasance. Any company that guarantees your site will receive a certain number of visits in a period of time, or will rise to the top of search results by a given date should be avoided like the plague. Guarantees on work done, such as a 6-month satisfaction guarantee, should be closely inspected and if are being offered by a reputable company, make for a great “insurance policy” against bad work.