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A guaranteed top ranking in the majority of search engines is a simple task and can be accomplished for far less than the $1295 to $3000+ that some so called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies ask.

Very shortly you too will know the truth and be able to do deal more effectively with your SEO and SEO companies.

Here are two of the biggest hypes in SEO.

First is the guaranteed 1st position hype...

Many companies tout this as a huge selling point of their SEO service. That's great. Until you read the fine print.

The fine print tells you that this guarantee is based on a pay to play basis. For all of us novices and laymen that is pay per click (PPC) advertising.

You pay a large fee to the SEO company and then you pay additional money for the PPC ads.

PPC is either in the form of bidding per click such as on Google AdWords or Overture. Or paid submission to Inktomi, AltaVista, AskJeeves, etc.

Bottom line is that for enough money you can be number one on any keyword.

Yes you can pay $8.00 per click on certain words in your industry, however the question is do you want to and is it worth it?

The second touted benefit is keyword research. Most of this research is based on what you tell the SEO and the use of tools such as WordTracker and Overture's Inventory tool.

The keyword list is mailed or emailed to you for approval.

A huge disadvantage is the limited amount of keywords that most SEO's include in their fee (some only allow 20 words.)

Most of the keywords are usually what all your competitors are targeting also.

Keywords need to be laser focused to your target market.

Think about what your product or service solves. Target customer benefits not features of your product.

More is better. This is definitely the case when dealing with Google Adwords where you want 100-400 keywords per campaign.

Why play in the pool with all the high volume, high dollar feature players, when you can have your own pond full of hungry benefit driven customers.

Remember that not all SEO companies operate like this, however here are a few things to find out before you give an SEO your business.

1. What specifically does the initial fee cover?

2. Do you use PPC advertising to meet the "guaranteed top 10 ranking" ? And if so are additional monies needed?

3. Do you build original pages and hand submit them to the search engines? If so what is your guarantee based on? Do you continue to revise these pages until the desired result is obtained?

4. How extensive is your keyword research? Do you have a limit as to how many words you optimize for? Is this limit based on the type of advertising medium used?

5. How do you track and test your results?

6. How do you make this a risk free deal for me? In other words if they don't perform you don't pay.

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When advertising it is very hard to make any type of guarantee unless you are paying for the result up front.

However you can acheive massive success when you have specific goals for your ads and follow a process of constant tweaking and testing.

You now have no excuse to ever be a willing victim to the handful of SEO's that prey on the unknowing.

Take this information and use it to explode your business.

About the author:
Pay for performance marketing specialist. Working with various industries to market their products and services through performance based result driven marketing.

http://www.right-on-the-money.com/dt/t/39/

(c)Copyright 2003 Rodney C. Boettger