by Robert Laws

Created on: October 01, 2009

SEO consultants claim to help you increase your exposure in search engine results. The expertise they bring is an understanding of how search engines index and rank websites. As the search engine companies fiercely protect their algorithms and regularly make improvements to them, the SEO experts learn their trade through trial and error, experience of what works and trying to interpret the (often cryptic) remarks of Google spokespeople.

There are some very good SEO consultants, who can help you climb the search engine rankings for particular search terms. Their help will get you much further than you could without them, assuming you are not an SEO expert yourself. However, SEO is not rocket science. If you have the time and the inclination, SEO is something you could manage yourself. Whether an SEO consultant is worth the money depends very much on the opportunity cost; what you would be giving up to take the time to learn and perform your own optimization.

There are two types of optimization; on-page and off-page. On-page optimization is about making your web page as appealing as possible to search engines. Off-page optimization is primarily about generating links to your web page from other relevant web pages. The bulk of the effort for on-page optimization is a one-time exercise, but off-page optimization is an ongoing effort.

If someone in the number one spot in the search engine results performs no ongoing SEO, they will slide down the rankings. This is partly because everyone else is still tweaking their own SEO and it is partly because the search engines place weight on currency and links. A good SEO campaign will include ongoing maintenance and ongoing generation of relevant links. In considering the value of an SEO consultant, you need to consider whether you intend to make outside SEO expenditure an ongoing commitment or accept that the positive day 1 impact of an SEO consultant will have decreasing value over time.

Many SEO consultants will tell you that 'content is king'. This means that the content of a website page has the greatest single impact on search engine placement. The content has to reflect the chosen keywords and it has to be strong enough to attract inbound links from other quality websites. Companies like Google and Yahoo, who define how best to rank results, are always trying to provide results that are more applicable to the search criteria. They want to present their users with results that contain the most relevant content. Concepts

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