Searching on google for SEO Services will provide you with a very good indication of how many firms and freelancers there are out there that provide search engine optimisation to companies in the united kingdom. Although still a relatively young industry, SEO has undergone a massive boom in line with the increase of competition related to online sales and marketing. Unfortunately not every provider out there is really up to the task of obtaining you first page rankings, been a new industry there is no “minimum standard of knowledge” or licensing requirement for somebody to start an organic SEO company, in essence, anyone can put his hand up and pronounce himself an expert in the field of search marketing. This has had an untoward impact, not only on the many customers who have paid for services only to see little if any improvement in their rankings, but also for those first-class companies out there who have seen the reputation of their trade diminished by the bitter effect of these fly by night “SEO experts”.
The problem posed for those looking to avail themselves of SEO Services is understandable, given that most business owners know next to zero about websites regarding server configuration, canonicalization, and duplicate content, how do you the customer ensure that you are not going to be take for a ride?
Fortunately, by exercising a levelheaded amount of diligence and caution before selecting an SEO consultancy, it is moderately easy to determine just who are the real professionals, and who are the charlatans. Ofcourse, in order to be able to do this, you will need to be armed with a certain amount of SEO knowledge, and that is just what this article will teach you.
Redirect non www. to www. (or vice versa)
By going to your website in your browser and removing the www. portion from the beginning of your web address, and then hitting enter, you can check if your website has a redirect in place, if your server is correctly configured, when you hit return, the www. portion should come back, check this on a few pages and not just your home page, if the www. portion fails to come back on any of your pages and the SEO company does not pick up on this, its time to move on. Note, if your website uses the url without the www. at the beginning as default, then the converse should be true and when you add www. and hit enter, it should revert back to the non www version of your url.
Do They Carry Out Checks To Reveal Canonical Urls ?
Canonical urls, or canonicalization is just a fancy SEO term that means the same content (or very similar content) is accessible on more than one page. This can be a very grave issue which can effect the overall ability of your website to rank well in google and the other top search engines. There are a few ways that canonicalization can come about, such as when a website has different pages containing the same products for different currencies, but the only part of the content that varies between the two page variations is the actual prices. Another cause can be poorly coded websites. Ask the company you are approaching for a quote if their services include checking for canonical urls as standard.
Will they Check Your Site For Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is another big rankings killer that negatively impacts the ability of affected pages to rank well, whilst at the same time having a unfavorable effect on the overall trust of your entire website. Make sure that the prospective SEO Services provider is aware of the severity that duplicate content has on a website, and that they have measures in place to check for it at the outset of any and all campaigns.
