Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is one of the best and less expensive ways of getting targeted traffic to your website or blog. It involves many aspects of a website, from copy writing to site architecture and link building, with the goal of showing up in the first page of results of the major search Engines (Specially Google, since it’s the most popular one) when people do searches with the keywords you’re targeting.

SEO isn’t a secret science, but you need a certain amount of technical knowledge and social media skills to do it properly. Doing it wrong or following the quick routes to success that some websites promote can get you penalized on the search engine rankings or even worse, banned altogether, even if it’s not intentional and just due to misguided theories about Google’s ever-changing policies. It’s also quite time consuming (usually SEO efforts take a few months to flourish) and you need to be tracking your strategies and tweaking them for best results.

For all those reasons, and specially if your core business has nothing to do with Search engine Optimization, is preferable to hire a good SEO agency to do the work for you, monitor your efforts and guide your general organic marketing strategy. It will cost you some money, but will free a lot of hours that you can invest in growing your business. But in a world full of cowboys and black hat SEOs, all promising the first slot for any search term, what can you do to make sure your money will be well spent and your SEO budget will get you the best results?

First of all, when selecting a SEO company remember that if it’s too good to be true then probably... it isn’t. Nobody can guarantee the first position on Google for any keyword, for some the competition is too strong or your website would need intensive re-engineering to get there that would conflict with its usability and it’s usefulness for your customers thus causing you more loss than benefit.

Also, anybody trying to impress you with lots of technical mumbo jumbo, and the amount of search engine submissions and directory submissions they are going to do is just wasting your time. A good SEO agency should be able to explain SEO in layman enough terms that a non technical customer can understand, and directory submissions are a thousand at the touch of a button with any automated SEO software. A good SEO company will get links pointing to your company, but those will be valuable links from websites that are related to your own and carry more value in the search engines than a lonely link swimming in the sea of hundreds of links a page on any random online directory or link farm.

Last but not least, anybody who cannot disclose their previous customers “for confidentiality reasons” or doesn’t have a portfolio to back up their experience either doesn’t have said experience or their previous customers aren’t satisfied with the company. Never a good sign. Also, if their contract doesn't include a monitoring period of at least 3 to 6 months they might be using black SEO techniques to get quick results that will deflate as soon as Google finds out and penalizes your site, but not before they're out of the door with your money.

Once you know what to avoid, deciding on what you want is easier. You want a company whose representative generates trust, and who can speak with you and explain what they are going to do in layman but exact terms. You also want to be satisfied that you will get regular reports on what has been done, what is going to happen with your website and what are the results. SEO is a long time effort, and results won't happen overnight, but you should see some progression on the reports, number of visitors and most importantly, sales.

Once you are satisfied with their representative, check their portfolio and if possible contact old clients that have been with them for more than 6 months to avoid any case of black seo causing a quick rise on the results followed by an equally quick ban from the Google listings.

And last but not least, always make sure the agreement includes clear quantificable objectives that relate to your company goals and which you can measure. This way, if things don't go as well as expected you can use them as an argument to finish your contract and look for a different one.