There is a perception that top ranking on search engines equates to traffic. If you are fortunate enough to get there, it does not end there. In fact, it opens up a ton more questions like, where are all the visitors. My company has many web sites for lead generation and we spend quite a bit of money with lead providers, PPC and various other online advertising methods. When you look at tools like overture keyword selector tools, http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, one would think that getting top 5 ranking for a term that gets 139,380 “alleged” monthly searches (from the Overture tool) would bring tons of traffic to your site. A lot of times it does not. There are many factors including, title tags that show up in the search results, quality of the site, etc. For those looking to hire an SEO firm, do your research first. SEO and the strategy a company uses always sounds good to a neophyte and even a well written agreement may deliver on the terms of getting keywords ranked but may fall short with the intent of the contract…bringing customers to your online business. I would start with this site, www.google-success.com/ to arm you with what the experts have been successful with. This site is a great resource for SEO, SEM and not to be overlooked SMO (Social media optimization) and much more.

If this doesn’t get the wheels turning or create more confusion, go to Google and see what the authorized Google bloggers say about SEO when it comes to getting ranked in Google, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/. SEO is about as gray of an area as it gets when it comes to what does and does not work in the marketing world. Every situation is different and things rarely go as planned…Murphy’s Law will strike. Your best plan is to be in the know and use this information to select your SEO expert.