Perhaps the biggest problem many small companies face with Search Engine Optimization is the fact that their website was built without a SEO strategy. The first focus is to get the website built, then once it is up, the next step is to get traffic to the site. While this is the most common approach taken, unfortunately most of the expense developing the website does nothing to help generate traffic to the website. More unfortunately many opportunities to optimize the website are completely omitted, with nearly all of the focus applied to the look and feel of the website. So, after all the time and money spent on developing a website, many times it is necessary to revisit and modify the website for SEO. The website content, actual text based content contained in the site, is the most important factor in Search Engine Optimization.

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A Search Engine Optimization Consultant should be retained in a similar manner as one would hire a consultant or firm to develop a company image. They both require a detailed upfront assessment, short term actions to bring about the desired change and a long term strategy including regular assessments to highlight deficiencies and necessary improvements. Unfortunately, many “SEO Experts” are not really providing true consulting and really have no understanding of marketing at all. They provide some services that could improve search engine ranking, but many of these services could have been leveraged for branding or developing a company image as well if implemented properly. Of course, without the proper upfront assessment, it is also possible that the services provided could do little to improve search ranking as they are not addressing the biggest need.

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