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How to Differentiate Between Good and Bad Internet Marketing Companies

It seems that dozens of new internet marketing companies pop up each and every day. If you're looking to improve your website and the traffic you see, how are you supposed to differentiate between the reputable, worthwhile companies that will make a big difference for you and the bad companies that are only going to be a waste of time and money? There are actually several different things that you can pay attention to in order to sort through some of the mess.

Black Hat Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

One of the most important things is to look at what the company says about its techniques. Some companies perform "black hat" SEO services, and openly state that. These practices could bring along terrible consequences for your website, including being penalized in the rankings or being blacklisted altogether. Therefore any internet marketing company that offers to bend, break or ignore the rules or standards should always be avoided.

Internet Marketing: How To Recognize A Black Hat Company

Even if a company doesn't state that they use black hat techniques, you should be able to get a sense for that by seeing their services or taking a look at their presentation. If they say they use link farms, multiple page redirects or cloaking, invisible text or anything else such as that, then they have given themselves away as a black hat organization.

Internet Marketing: Do They Guarantee #1 Rankings?

No internet marketing or SEO company can guarantee you a number 1 spot in the natural search engine results, since they do not control how Google evaluates and ranks a website.

They can only guarantee you a top placement in the sponsored ads, where you will have to pay for each click to your website. This is known as pay per click (PPC) advertising and should not be confused with search engine optimization (SEO)

Even Google has a warning on their support help forum that you should be wary of companies claiming to guarantee rankings.

The truth is that you can't guarantee a number 1 ranking for anything, particularly in tough niches. You can only guarantee improvements…

Affordable Internet Marketing Services?

As the saying goes, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. That certainly applies to the guarantee of a number 1 ranking, and it also applies to an internet marketing company whose services are extremely cheap. Finding an affordable price is always important, but if you pay something in the bargain basement or hard to believe it's true category, you probably will not receive many actual benefits in return.

Out of Date Internet Marketing Companies

You will also want to pay attention to what kinds of practices the company offers. Some SEO and internet marketing companies are woefully out of date, promising to stuff your META tags with keywords or to use lots of link exchanges, or other techniques that have been outdated and phased out of effective SEO. This is a blatant signal that the company in questions is out of date with current practices and won't be able to deliver true results.

As you can see, there are many different ways and warning signs to help you differentiate a bad internet marketing company from a good internet marketing company. Pay attention to clues such as the types of services they provide, what they guarantee or promise and how much they cost. By using these factors you will have a considerably easier time choosing between the plethora of internet marketing companies that are out there today.