The Internet presents so many opportunities for companies and organizations to market in today's world. Internet marketing such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, and online advertising, have the power to put you in front of local or global audiences of millions of people.

Unfortunately, with the Internet comes a swarm of companies and people that look to profit from the lack of education there is specific to online marketing. To help our customers and readers be better informed, here are some tips to identify suspect emails and companies that you probably shouldn't be doing business with:

• Ignore email solicitations for SEO that usually say something like, “We can place your website on top of the Natural Listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN…” or “We visited your website and noticed you are not on top of the rankings…” 
• No one can guarantee you a number one ranking on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Heck, they can’t even guarantee you first page organic listings. If someone is making these claims, then they aren’t a legitimate company and aren’t looking out for your best interests. The only way to help improve your site’s ranking is through calculated changes to your website and content and lots of work to build legitimate incoming links. Go with a company that is local and one you can shake hands with and look eye to eye.
• Avoid companies that promise to provide hundreds of inbound links to your site. While inbound links are an important factor in your search engine ranking, the quality of those links is equally important. Most likely, these companies have created “link-farms” (need to explain link farms) and Google is always on the hunt to penalize any website that deals with a link-farm. 
• Always be sure you know what you are paying for. There are organic search engine results and paid search engine results and they provide dramatically different results. Investing in SEO is a long term investment that can pay off tremendously for a great length of time, whereas pay-per-click advertising is a short term investment that looks to return immediate results.
• Do a WHOIS (need to explain what WHOIS is) on the domain of the company and reach out to them. It’s easy for anyone to talk about SEO but ask for them to present active referrals you can contact and/or case studies on the work they’ve done.

Contact Boom Consulting with any questions you have about search engine optimization and we’ll work with you to develop a SEO solution specific to your website that benefits your business.

Do you have any other tips, advice, or personal horror stories to add this? Let us know.