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Top 5 Qualities to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization Program
for your Website

By Jim Lisi

These days with millions of websites out there, you need a way to get noticed. When your company website is ranked highly in the major search engines, customers from all over the world can find your front door. suddenly, your virtual storefront becomes prime business property and you are making sales 24/7.

What can a web site owner do to make sure your site appears in the top 2 pages in any given search engine? You could buy some submission software, read some books and try it yourself. But what if you miss something and find your site’s not positioned, or worse, banned. The only other option is to hire a search engine specialist.

There are alot of self-proclaimed, "SEO specialists" and "search engine submission" companies, so you need to know what to look for in the positioning program they offer.

Here are my top five things to look for in a Search Engine position program:

1. SE Optimization (SEO) – The pages on your site are checked for the percentage of keywords you want to target, and the quality of the content on the page. Your SEO consultant should make recommendations regarding your site content to improve it in the eye of the Search Engines.

Key search engines like MSN and AOL Search still rely on metatags or html code that include keywords related to your site. A good SEO optimization of your metatags can mean the difference of a #40 ranking vs. a Top 20 ranking.

2. Pay per click (PPC) – PPC search engines like Overture (formerly Goto.com) and Findwhat can get you targeted, fast traffic while you are patiently watching the other search engines to rank your site. Recently, Overture’s top 3 keywords results show up at the top of searches on Yahoo! above the Yahoo! paid sites. For some keywords, paying for a top 3 position can be very expensive, but with careful research you can find some keywords available for 5 cents per click.

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