How do I choose an SEO company?

Dear Big Cheese,

I run a small professional services company in Charlotte and I have been talking to other business owners who have told me that I need to find a good SEO company to promote my website—but they disagree on what makes “a good” SEO company. Some of my colleagues suggest price, others performance, others by an SEO company’s client list...

In your opinion, how should I go about choosing an SEO company that will do the best job optimizing my site and get it to the top of the search engines?

Keith C., Charlotte.

Dear Keith,

A lot of decisions a business owner or manager has to make are subjective… but Search Engine Optimization is not! And here is why: A good company will be easy to find—and by finding them, you will know they are good at what they do.

If you go to your favorite search engine, Google, Yahoo, etc. type in your city name and what you are looking for—like you would any other search. In this case, “Charlotte Search Engine Optimization” or "Charlotte SEO" on top, (after the sponsored links if they are there) are the companies who currently understand how to optimize a website the best. They recognize the value, have taken the time to do this for themselves and organically rank for a keyphrase that they have chosen, and for which they have supporting content in the site.

And this is what they will do for you!

From there you can narrow down the choices by recommendations by satisfied clients, range of services (such as do they do Pay-Per-Click, as well as organic SEO), and their performance with customers they have been working with for more than 6 months who are in similar industries to yours.

This is what you want your prospective customers to do when they do a search for your city and service... so find a company who can do this for themselves!

Big Cheese Tip of the Day: Always ask your prospective search engine optimization or pay-per-click vendor if they are working with a company that would be in direct competition for your preferred keyphrases--you don't want them to have any conflicts of interest when working to get the best qualified traffic to your site.

Check back here soon for a list of things to ask your SEO company.

The Big Cheese
Mouse and Man - A Charlotte Web Design Company

Online Reputation Management

Dear Big Cheese,

When I do a search for my business name on Google, I find all sorts of things including an old complaint, an online thread about another business with a similar name in another state, a former employee's MySpace page (with some unsavory pictures!), my golf league scores and some person's blog that mentions the company. Then much later if you dig and dig, you will find a link to a directory that links to our company website.

How do I change this and make my business website the thing that comes up on a search? I fear we are losing business opportunities!

Jon S. -- Charlotte, North Carolina

Dear Jon,

Dear Jon,

What you need is a combination is SEO (search engine optimization) and Online Reputation Management. Through the use of both of these tools, Mouse and Man, (headquartered in Charlotte) can make sure that when people do a search for you, your business, even your services, your company website will be the first thing people see!

This will draw qualified and targeted website traffic to your website and get you that business you are looking for.

Please give us a call (704-968-1775) to set up a consultation meeting and we can get started right away.

The Big Cheese
Mouse and Man
Charlotte Web Design and SEO

What is SEO?

Dear Big Cheese,

I see that you do web development--but I also heard that you do SEO. Can you explain what this means?

Joe P -- Charlotte

Dear Joe ,

SEO is "search engine optimization"-- which is the process of tuning a website such that it ranks high in the search results of a search engine like google or yahoo.

The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the better the chance that that site will be visited by a user--and those users are your potential clients, customers, etc. SEO helps to ensure that a site is "search engine friendly" and accessible to a search engine and increases the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

Mouse and Man offers web developent and search engine optimization services from our world headquarters in Charlotte, NC.

--Big Cheese
www.mouseandman.com