Q1. What is SEO?
Q2. Why SEO?
Q3. How do I know which SEO firm to choose?
Q4. How complicated is SEO? Can’t I just do it myself?
Q5. Why are you the SEO expert?
Q6. How often will I receive ranking reports?
Q7. What search engines do you focus on?
Q8. How long will it take my site to rank for my keywords?
Q9. Is a contract required?
Q10. Do you offer other services besides SEO?
Q11. I saw someone promising top rankings for a really cheap amount. Is this for real?
Q12. Do I need to pay someone to submit my site to the search engines?

Q1. What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The main goal of SEO is to optimize your website so that it ranks at the top of the search results for your desired keywords. The process of SEO involves making changes to the pages of your site itself, known as “on site” optimization, as well as performing tactics known as “off site” optimization, such as getting inbound links, listed in directories, and more. At SEO-MAMA, we have hundreds of tactics in our arsenal we use to get sites highly ranked, and a different set of tools/methods is used for each client depending on their situation.

Q2. Why SEO?
If your business has a website, you need SEO. People are searching every hour of every day for terms that are related to your business, and if your site is not at the top of the results; your competitors are receiving the clicks, views, traffic, and sales from these keyword searches. Essentially, not performing SEO on your site is an expensive business mistake. It’s costing your company sales and customers, and even worse; it’s allowing your competition to get them. In addition, pay-per-click advertising is continually getting more expensive. The bid prices for targeted keywords are always rising. SEO can allow you to get the same number of clicks, but at a much lower per-click cost. Finally, according to many research studies, SEO clicks convert to sales at a higher rate than clicks derived via pay-per-click campaigns. This is often because certain credibility is perceived for sites that are highly ranked. Anyone can buy a pay-per-click advertisement. It’s much harder to get top ranked in the search results.

Q3. How do I know which SEO firm to choose?
The thing with SEO is that everyone claims they’re an SEO expert, but the truth is that very few know what they’re doing in this industry. The only way to figure out who knows what they’re doing is to choose a firm who is highly ranked for a competitive keyword like “SEO Expert”. If the firm is highly ranked for “Kansas City SEO Guru” and nothing else, chances are they’re not up to par and you’re wasting your money. Ask them to show you what keywords they rank for. We and our clients rank for highly competitive keywords and we can show you the search results to back it up. If you have a firm you’re considering and want us to review their site, let us know, and we’ll explain why we’re better.

With SEO, you’re either getting someone who knows what they’re doing, and your money is an investment that will have an ROI, or you’re getting someone who doesn’t have a clue and your money will disappear without any ROI provided. To further illustrate, hiring a cheap firm and getting ranked #299 for “Power Sanders” won’t get you any real traffic, and you’ve wasted your $50/mo you spent. Getting ranked in the top ten results for “Power Sanders” could make you an internet millionaire, and hence the larger monthly amount you spent is quite meaningless at that point. Remember, nobody cares about the search results beyond the first and second page, so they don’t provide any real value.

Q4. How complicated is SEO? Can’t I just do it myself?
To be straightforward, SEO is a pretty complex subject. The reason lies in that the search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, and the way they rank pages/sites. Essentially, with SEO, you are trying to reverse engineer how search engines rank websites. Trying to crack the formula for each search engine is not an easy task, and if it was, everyone would be top ranked on Google becoming an internet millionaire.

In addition, becoming an “SEO Expert” is not taught in colleges/universities, mainly because it evolves so quickly and hence textbooks would become out of date. Hence, it’s an ongoing learning process that you must keep up with. To give you an idea of how complex SEO can be, many fortune 500 firms either outsource their SEO to firms like ours, or have an entire department dedicated to SEO. Many of the larger more reputable SEO firms (including ours) have analysts, copywriters, link strategists, programmers, and more. In addition, trying to teach yourself SEO by scouring the internet may not be the best use of your time. You have a business to run. It’s like going to dental school so you can clean your own teeth to save money on dental appointments. Unless you plan on doing it for a living, it just doesn’t make sense to spend all the time required to be proficient in the craft.

Q5. Why are you the SEO expert?
We have been doing SEO for 10+ years since the very beginning of the internet. We’re top ranked for highly competitive keywords like “SEO Expert” against all the other SEO firms in the world. Our client list includes Fortune 500 companies. Our clients offer rave reviews and testimonials for our site. We’re featured in many national publications as an expert on the topic of SEO, and are continually used as a media reference. We eat, sleep, and breathe SEO. It’s all we do.

Q6. How often will I receive ranking reports?
We typically issue ranking reports quarterly for clients. There are several reasons for this. Similar to how stock prices move daily, there is a lot of day to day movement in rankings that is really meaningless in the overall big picture. For example, a keyword might move up a position one day or week, and down a position the next day or week. Looking at weekly or even monthly trends is too short of a time frame; it does not provide enough data to see the overall big picture of how keywords are ranking and performing. We try to focus on overall trends, and a quarter (3 month) snapshot is an accurate depiction of the overall upward movement your site is experiencing.

Q7. What search engines do you focus on?
We typically optimize for Google, MSN, and Yahoo; since they drive the majority of all searches executed in the world. If additional engines are necessary, please just let us know and we can try to incorporate them into the SEO campaign.

Q8. How long will it take my site to rank for my keywords?
The answer to this question depends on a multitude of factors including:
How many keywords you’ve chosen. The more you target, the longer it takes.
How competitive your keywords are. In other words, how many sites are targeting them?
How well optimized your competitors’ sites are. You’re competing against them!
How well optimized your site currently is and its current rankings for the terms. This is our starting point, and sometimes we start with sites that have zero optimization, and other times we start with sites that are already ranked #100 and we move them to #1.
The age of your domain name and website. The older, the better, and the faster you’ll move up.

Typically, we see top rankings for clients within 3 to 24 months depending on the above factors. Once you submit the “Free SEO Quote” form, we can evaluate your site and industry and give you a ballpark estimate of how many months until you’ll begin seeing good results.

Q9. Is a contract required?
We require a 1 year contract for three reasons. Number one, we want clients who are committed to a longer term relationship and want to give SEO a fair shot. We want good long term clients we can continually make money for. We don’t like to “churn and burn” lower end clients. Number two, there is a substantial upfront investment we make in your site and to have clients cancelling after a few months just doesn’t make sense for us financially. Finally, SEO takes time to see results and a one year period gives us enough time to show you serious results. Without giving us at least one year to show results, you’re selling us and yourself short. SEO is a long term crucial piece of your online marketing strategy.

Q10. Do you offer other services besides SEO?
No, our services at this point are solely focused on SEO, which is our core competency. Many firms try to be a “jack of all trades” and end up being mediocre at all of them. We prefer to do one thing and do it extremely well.

Q11. I saw someone promising top rankings for a really cheap amount. Are they for real?
It’s a scam. If their cheap services actually worked, large SEO firms would be outsourcing to those guys instead of hiring talented programmers, analysts, and link building experts. In reality, that’s just not the case. Those firms know that if they charge low amounts, they can get away with delivering nearly nothing, and still keep your money, because it’s not worth suing over. It’s a volume “churn and burn” game they play, and they simply sell a little garbage to a lot of people, cycling new people in each day. If their services worked, we’d be out of business!

Q12. Do I need to pay someone to submit my site to the search engines?
Absolutely not. The search engines can easily pickup your site from the inbound links pointing at your site.