SEO Truths and Myths

If you're not paying $1000+ every month, your site will never be found! This seems to be the generally established opinion by SEO Companies. The truth is: search engines don't care how much you spend. If you want your site to be found quickly given particluar phrases, ensure that they are included in your site content and tell your webmaster to include the same phrases in the titles, descriptions, and keywords of the appropriate pages on your site.
If you're not using an SEO, Google won't display your page in search results! Google doesn't care. If your site is brand new, Google cares even less. Google's "real time" indexing system takes over a month to find your page for the first time, weeks more to index it. SEO companies love to tell you "look what we did for you!", but the truth is that if you'd have just sat back and waited, it would have been in the top ten results without their influence. Ensure the words you want to be found for are in the site content. If they're super important, let your webmaster know to also include them in both titles and descriptions for the corresponding pages. Check to see if Google has even gotten around to indexing these pages by typing "those words site:yoururl.com" - less the quotes - in Google and other search engines. If it's not showing up, you either don't have those words and phrases in your site, or the search engine hasn't indexed your site yet. They get to it when they get to it. SEO Companies have no say in fast this happens.
You need an SEO to "buy" the words and phrases you'll be found for! Try offering a search engine - ANY search engine - money to be found for certain words: they'll laugh at you. There are programs like "AdWords" you can get from Google as well as other Pay Per Click type ways of advertising. But ask yourself this: when was the last time you INTENTIONALLY clicked on an ad for a website, and furthermore when was the last time you made a purchase or initiated conversation due to a site having had that advertisement in your search engine of choice? Are you aware that there is a plugin called "AdBlocker" which is available for nearly every web browser, and that I don't see ads at all when searching Google?

Google has a "red flag" list they maintain for dealing with SEO companies. Now... I'll cooperate - upon request - with an SEO even though I advise against their use. However, if the company in question would have tripped one of these red flags, the answer will be a resounding "NO". The most common one will be: "requests your FTP account information or root access to your server." They don't need this. All I need is the code they want me to add to the source and where they'd like it to be placed. My sites are coded in PHP and there are not "flat HTML" pages for these companies to go in and edit. They only need to provide the updated code, and I'll place it in the appropriate place. If they ask for FTP info and root access, they will have abilities they should not have. If they won't do their work without this, then they cannot be trusted with the login information nor with the money you'll be required to pay.

Another typical red flag I've run into is "Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do." The last one I had the pleasure of chatting with swore they did "other things" which I wouldn't understand even if they explained it. I objected that I'm pretty sharp, and would probably get it, but they wouldn't elaborate as though it's some kind of "trade secret". I'm not a fan of having that tone used with me. I assume you aren't either. The simplest way to put it: there are companies out there that will extort your lack of knowledge by charging you a lot of money. While I like to make money for doing work, I don't have it in me to charge exhorbitant amounts for essentially doing nothing. If you'd like to pay exhorbitant fees for someone to do nothing, please send that check to me as it makes no sense to get a third party involved.