Foreword

There are many things to consider when hiring an IT Services firm for your company's needs. Ionisis understands that Clients are not aware of the complexity of design, development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Unfortunately, Clients are sometimes wooed by companies that promise results that they cannot deliver, or even worse, by companies that know they cannot deliver, and also know that the client is not aware of how to verify success or failure. Because Ionisis was founded by developers who care more about standards and ethics than the dollar, Ionisis would like to share the following important tips with you, to help you understand a little more about the process, and what to look out for.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

Let's face it: IT Firms are a dime-a-dozen. Virtually everyone with a computer and too much free time calls themselves a web designer, or web developer, or seo consultant. In our collective experience working with other IT firms, other freelancers, and other gurus, we've learned that there are only 3 types of IT companies:

The Good: these guys have spent years doing what they love, and doing their homework. They know the ins-and-outs, and the whys. They are good at their jobs, and are usually worth the money.

The Bad: these guys have a little experience, and have read some articles about the more advanced areas of their work, and have a basic understanding of what they are doing; so they slap a sticker/label on their resume/services list, and think that they can fulfil it. They want to be better, and they want to earn a name for themselves, but their claims are just not justified by their skills.

The Ugly: these are the worst. These guys know damned good and well they can't give you what you need, and they also know that you can't verify it, because you lack the technical experience and understanding. This is not limited to individuals. While working freelance, the founder of Ionisis had contracted with several very large companies who outsourced everything, and led the clients to believe that it was all done in-house. They knew nothing about the freelancers working with them, but assured the client's they had the best experts in their field, right there, in house. Clients were wooed out of a lot of money, and the freelance developers (usually in under-developed countries) were paid only about FIVE PERCENT of the project price. As a result, developers were unhappy, and clients were given garbage results and products. For legal reasons, we cannot name any of these companies; but you may be surprised to learn that some of them are fortune 500 companies!

The Great: Ok, so there are 4, in our book. What separates the "good" from the "great" is a very fine line, and they are otherwise identical. Take for example a painting: person 1 is a paint-by-numbers person; they do things by the book, and can usually get textbook results, which is a good thing. Person 2 is Rembrandt. There are no numbers, no outlines, no color sets needed; they use their eye, their keen understanding of the interpretation of colors in a given context, and their finess, to create something much more abstract, unique, and valuable. This is the same way with development. Some experts are outright gurus, and don't just see statistics, code, keywords, and data; they see the meaning behind it all, and can use it in ways that get better results. We would like to think that is Ionisis .

Promises, Promises

No one can promise you specific results; if they do, beware of them. If you insist upon being promised a specific result, then use our competitors.

Keep in mind that, even if your website gets front page as a result of a company's seo service, that does not mean that you will stay there forever. Search Trends change, competitors websites change, and many other factors are always variable. As a result, to stay on top of results you are recommended to contact your seo company when you see your position start slipping, and send your website in for a "checkup". This should never cost you the same amount as the original service, as most of the work is already done, and only needs updated. However, if the company that you bring your website to for a checkup is not the same seo company that you originally used, they may require that you undergo the process anew.

Many companies promise to list your website with over (insert number here) so many search engines (we've seen claims of up to 500 search engines). You may be interested to know that there is only about 30 legitimate search engines in the entire world, most of which are not even used. Ionisis has a continually revised list of legitimate and active search engines that we submit your website to (not counting directories). The number usually stays around only 20 search engines. That's a big difference from the 100, 200, 500, etc that many are promised. When doing research into these search engines, we found that most engines that companies claim to be submitting you to either died out years ago, or no longer take submissions, or no longer do "search", or have sold to larger search companies, etc. The same holds true for directories, except that directories require a LOT more effort to get listed with, and your listing could take as long as 1 year to show up, if it is even accepted at all. Directories (especially reputable ones) are notoriously difficult to get into.

Any company that claims to be "automatically submitting your website to X search engines and X directories" is outright lying. Every search engine or directory worth worth submitting to requires MANUAL submission, and MANUAL verification. If the company does not clearly inform you that someone will physically sit down at their desk and manually submit you to these companies, then they are taking your money and doing nothing. There are still a very very few search engines and directories that allow for auto submission, but they are ignored for the most part because they do not require any "editorial process". Most importantly: if google finds your website listed in one of these directories, you could get your website banned from google's search results, as they regard them as paid links. So in the end, you are paying money to get your own website banned from google.

Results

In terms of SEO, a company should be able to verify their claims in a way that a client with no technical skills can understand; this is where most clients are wooed by misleading or false claims. Keep in mind that if a company is new, or if their primary focus is not SEO, they may not have very many examples to show; but if they are trying to sell you SEO, then they need to have a least ONE website to showcase, no matter how new they are.

A good example of client verification would be for the IT firm to provide the client with an example website which has good results, and verify that they are responsible for such results. A good way to do this is to request that the IT firm send you a few search terms related to the category of the example website, and see if you can find their example website within the first few pages of search results.

Specific terms can target the exact website the company provides as an example; vague terms allow for the full range of competitors' results, which is when you can see how they REALLY compare in the results. On the next page you will be given an example of this.

Dirty Tricks

One of the biggest problems with SEO companies, other than false claims, is dirty tricks. Many seo companies will perform what is called "black hat" techniques to obtain desired results. This may even seem impressive at first; but woe to you who go there. Black Hat SEO is dishonest and misleading. Search engines aren't stupid; once they detect that your website makes use of such techniques you can be permanently banned from that engine, and consequently, from all search results. This is website death; if no one can find your website, then you do not exist. Make sure that the seo company you retain does not indulge in any dishonest activities.

The full range of dirty things to look out for is beyond the scope of this article, but we will give an example or two. When contacting a firm for SEO, ask them if they provide and "paid links" services. If they do, hang up. Paid links can get your permanently banned from search engines. It can definitely boost your ranking, but it is done so artificially, and that is a definite no-no. If you use firefox, then you can hit ctrl+u to view the company's web page source code. If you see a lot of words that look like they should be showing up on the page, but are not, do not call them. This is called "keyword spamming" and has gotten quite a few people permanently banned from google; you don't want that to be your website. Even if they do not use those techniques on your website, you still do not want your website to be associated with theirs in any way, as it will affect your page ranking. Keep in mind that it is expected to have words in "title=" and "alt=" attributes, which are not usually seen by a user.

Get your own name! Many web development firms will register your domain name for you, and host your website on their servers. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can end up with you not having a your domain name any more, and sometimes not even a website. Sometimes clients decide that they later want to retain another firm for new work, and the previous firm will not release the domain name, or the content. If you register your domain name yourself, then that is one less obstacle that you have to worry about in the long run. If your firm hosts your content, you may have a problem with that as well, but that usually is not so much of a problem for smaller websites, and most of the content can be retrieved by an experienced user, using only a web browser. Ionisis always recommend using Godaddy.com for your domain name registration, and for hosting, if you choose to host your own site.

Workmanship

If you hired a web design company, then you can validate their workmanship by going to http://validator.w3.org and entering in a website address that they handled the design for. Note that no one is perfect, and it is very common to miss a few minor details that can cause the errors to snowball. For example, if a designer forgot to close a single html tag, then it would snowball into almost every tag after that one being declared invalid. Also note that just because a website is XHTML compliant does not mean that it is web-standards complaint.

Web Standards are beyond the scope of this article, but in short, they are (as the name suggests) a set of common standards that web developers and web browsers are expected to honor, as they are beneficial to the internet as a whole. Microsoft REPEATEDLY REFUSES to adhere to web standards with Internet Explorer, which is why almost half of the world's users are using Firefox now. Don't even get us started on their operating systems (do yourself a favor, learn Linux; after all, by the year 2012, 25% of the world will be using it --if they don't already use Macintosh)...