I get this question a lot – although actually, what I really get are people coming to me who hired someone to do SEO for them who are pretty sure they just took their money and didn’t do anything for them.

I don’t know if it’s just my industry, or I just hear about it more with SEO because I’m actually working in my industry, but there seem to be a lot of people who offer SEO services who either don’t know what they’re doing or don’t know how to manage the expectations of their clients.

Yes, there are definitely cases that I have run into where SEO specialists have not been doing anything I can find to help their clients improve their rankings on search engines (That is, ultimately, what our job is: to help our clients rank on search engines.) However, there are also unfortunately a lot of expectations around SEO that someone who’s really worth their salt cannot live up to.  So, here’s a short list of some things that I do, although this really just scratches the surface – stay tuned for another post with more information.

I set up and then check your website visitor statistics, to see how your clients are finding you.

It is amazing to me how many people don’t know or don’t think it’s important to install tracking on their website. Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google, and with most website platforms it’s as easy to implement as opening an Analytics account and adding the tracking code and verification codes they give you into the back end of your website.

Without this or some other tracking set up, it’s impossible to even know where to start. If your previous SEO person did not set up tracking, they were operating blind. BAD SIGN. If they DID set up tracking and were using it to hone in on how best to help you, that’s a GREAT SIGN. If you don’t have tracking, that’s the first thing I’m going to set up for you – it’s nearly impossible to do my job well without this information.

I will make sure you’re registered with Google and Yahoo!/Bing.

This is also a simple thing to do – it’s done through Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster platforms (Bing owns Yahoo!, so you kill two birds with one stone by registering your site with Bing.) Once again, they’re free. Even if the search engines already know you exist, registering with them means they can give you suggestions on how to improve your website according to their standards, and you can get more in-depth information on what keywords your website is ranking for.

I will try to give you realistic expectations.

Part of this has to do with keyword targeting – read my last blog post for more information on that. Also, any SEO specialist who tells you that they can get you ranking within a month for any keyword without knowing what the keyword is SHOULD NOT BE HIRED. Certainly there are ways to get you ranking for whatever keyword you choose that quickly, but most of those methods are frowned upon by Google, and will ultimately get you penalized after you’ve enjoyed a short period of top rankings. It is MUCH harder to recover from a penalty than it is to work your way up the rankings, and the monetary investment of penalty recovery is also a lot more in the long run.

There’s an important thing to remember about SEO specialists: we don’t control the search engines. Instead, we are doing our best through keeping up with current industry trends to give you suggestions on what to change based on what the search engines are prioritizing. This can change at any time. What worked and was considered a “white hat” (above board) practice six years ago is not at all anymore; even things that were important six months ago may have changed. Ultimately, I’d be wary of anyone who promises definitive results instead of proof of progress by showing the ability to increase rankings and traffic slowly over time.

There’s much more that an SEO specialist does; stay tuned for the next blog post to learn more.