Choosing an SEO

How is it possible to know if the person or company you are choosing to spend your money with is really an effective , experienced SEO that will deliver high ranking lasting results?

If you are like most of us, lately you get emails and phone calls galore from people offering to get your website to come up on the front page of Google. It seems everybody is claiming to be an expert on the subject. Experience is very important, but anyone can tell you they have been doing SEO for any amount of years, and how do you really check? They can show you they have references but how do you know they are real?....or that the customers results stayed long after the reference was written?

There is no SEO course at University and no Industry recognized qualification. It comes down to that company or individuals commitment to study and learn; get experience and apply it.

We have chosen these 10 very simple questions that any SEO should know the answers to, as first hand basic information -

10 questions any SEO should know about

   What is Page Rank and why is it called that?
   Who is Matt Cutts?
   Where do you source back-links from?
   What is a SERP?
   What is Link Juice?
   Who are your SEO mentors?
   What is the difference between ‘On Page’ and ‘Off Page’ SEO?
   What are your office hours, and where is it?
   Where do you rank on Google for your own core searches?
   What is ‘Search Engine Watch’?


We think SEO should be the companies core business.....sole focus. It pays to look for an SEO company that specializes in improving Organic rankings. Not building websites.

Optimax Answers -

  • Page Rank is a ‘Quality Score’ of any web page. It is a Trademark of Larry Page the founder of Google, and has nothing to do with where you rank on the page. It is also know as ‘Google's view of the importance of the page’.
  • Matt Cutt’s is more or less Google's spokesperson to SEO companies. He is the interface between the Search Engine and the industry. Also referred to as Google’s chief Spam Cop.
  • Back-links are the glue in any SEO work. It is important to know that the back-links served to your site are being served in both quality and quantity. Make sure your SEO has a solid back-link strategy. Read all about OptiMax back-link quality and link strategies.
  • A SERP is a Search Engine Results Page. Simply the page that recommends the websites to you to choose from.
  • Link Juice is a commonly known name for Page Rank passed on through a donating link. Make sure your SEO knows how to value the links serving Link Juice to you site.
  • Everyone who has studied SEO learned from popular on line mentors like ‘Aaron Wall author of SEO Book’. This resource is so main-stream it is almost like the industry handbook.
  • ‘On Page’ is working in your websites page of code. ‘Off Page’ is working on other websites pointing links to your target. Up until 5 – 6 years ago ‘On Page’ was where most of the work was done. These days it is 80% about ‘Off Page’. So if your prospective SEO cant give you a solid ‘Off Page’ Link strategy then run like the wind.
  • Optimax are open 9:00am to 5:00pm every week day and you are welcome to come in and visit our office and SEO studio. A huge majority of people in this industry are one-man-bands working from home, off a mobile phone...stay at home parents or freelancers that tend to have a habit of disappearing. Optimax is a thoroughly staffed professional business with an after hours service.
  • Optimax ranks on the front page of Google for our core searches - Website Optimisation, and #1 for Website Optimisation Brisbane. See a report of our own front page positions below.
  • Search Engine Watch is a website of course. A lot like an on line newspaper for the SEO industry.

If your prospective SEO does not have good answers to any more than one or two of these questions, then keep looking around. This is simple stuff passed around frequently in the SEO community.

Remember there are three different kinds of results that feature on the Google Search Engine Results Page -

Your prospective SEO may not be offering what you think they are offering. Many are calling you to simply place Paid Click Advertising for you. They charge a premium for something so simple and easy to do yourself.

  • Google Adwords (Pay Per Click/sponsored links)
  • The Organic Listing
  • Google Map Pin (Google Places)

Optimax does not encourage spending too much money on Paid Clicks, and rather encourages chasing Organic results; a more permanent solution. We specialise in improving your websites organic listing.

The Google map Pins are a great service for small local business. It is free to join and you can do it yourself. Your Google Pin will take turns with your competitors at being shown. We optimize Google Map Pins to eventually merge with your organic listing and display permanently on the home page results.

Sometimes you will see different results in different browsers. All these results are not actual unadjusted Google results, and exclusive to that local computer only. Click here to learn more about how to keep your browser clean.

Why are there suddenly so many people claiming to know all about SEO?

It has only been the last 2 – 3 years since the hordes of website builders and web-developers have realised that placing a websites position on Google is an attractive business service. The yellow pages is collapsing in popularity, and people seem to like leaving the company that held such a monopoly so long and demanded such a premium for it. They use Google.

Remember when websites were $25,000 for something decent? Those days they were all real website builders that constructed the pages manually from code. Then along came programs like Adobe Dreamweaver that now act as the interpreter. Now they can just drag and drop a picture into a page and see the code update automatically. Website builders emerged in their millions and the price of websites plummeted to what they are today.

So the logical solution for these small website building individuals is to become overnight SEO’s, by simply adding a couple of pages to their website and claiming they have been doing it all along.

Optimax™ is a registered Trademark of ProTrade Australia since 2003. Founder Peter Smithson has been studying the development of the Google Algorithm since Google conception in 1996.