So you’ve decided to hire a professional SEOto optimize your website. Great! Now what? Well, before you sign on the dotted line be sure you asked the most important and fundamental questions.

Q: What type of techniques will you use to optimize my site?

A: If the answer is “we can not reveal our secrets”, run for the hills. A good SEO will walk you through the steps they take to optimize your website – they will also reveal their pricing. You want to hire a company or consultant that you can trust.

Q: How many pages will you optimize?

A: All of them! Beware of search marketing firms that optimize per page. Many inexperienced SEO’s will say they will optimize your home page and a few other pages of the site. A well-rounded search engine optimization campaign will include every page of your site.

Q: Will you guarantee results?

A: While a guarantee would be great, there are no such things as guarantees in this industry. The Search Engine Marketing industry is forever fluctuating. Major search engines change their algorithms so frequently that search engine results can not be promised.

If the potential SEO you are interviewing says that they will guarantee first page rankings on major search engines, DO NOT hire this person. No one can make such a promise, not even Google.

Q: How long will it take to see results?

A: A good SEO campaign is a long-term strategy. If an SEO firm says that your project will take 1-3 months, they are inexperienced and are not committed to your company. A reputable SEO firm will monitor and tweak the campaign regularly. Most SEO campaigns start at a minimum of 6 months and may last years.

Q: What are your best practices?

A: There are no “one size fits all” strategies in the SEO industry. The firm you hire should emphasize that the SEO strategy they set out for you fits your company and website goals.

The SEM firm or SEO consultant should not only follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but should also present you with different options in achieving great results.The SEM campaign should include on-site optimization as well as link building, a PPC campaign, and social networking (if applicable to your business).