As the demand for search engine marketing continues to grow, so does the demand for experts in the area. In recent months, mass emails seem to be the new promise of top search engine rankings. How do you choose an SEO provider that will understand the needs of your website and provide quality service?

Lets breakdown the elements of SEO, to make it easier for you to recognize a good product. To find a good SEO provider, look for these things:

They need to be able to check your current site, evaluate it and set goals for it. They should develop a list of target keywords relevant to the site, write and insert good meta tags for you, and check all other tags to make sure that theyre alright. They should also check all your content and make recommendations on how to improve it to get better search engine rankings.

They should provide link-building programs, including writing and submitting listings to directories and giving you ideas on who to ask for links from. Reports tracking search engine referrals to your site are always good, especially if they explain what they mean and how they can be improved.

Website maintenance is a very important aspect of any SEO program. Once their site has been optimized, many people dont realize that they need to keep up these methods over time. If you let your site lapse back to the way it was as you add new content, then youll need to start all over again.

What kind of price can you put on all this? Well, pricing structures for SEO vary a lot between companies. Some companies will charge more because they include a monthly maintenance fee, while other companies offer customized proposals based on a websites specific need. In general, good SEO can cost as much as $150 an hour, so be prepared for that. Keep in mind that the larger your site is, the more work will be involved. It will naturally take less time to optimize a smaller, simpler site, so keep this in mind when you consider the pricing.

After youre more comfortable with what the services offered are and how theyre priced, youll want to make sure that the company youre choosing as your SEO provider has the knowledge and skill to complete the work for you. You should talk to three or four companies before you choose one. Be sure to ask them these questions, and back off if you dont feel like youre getting an honest answer:

1. How long has your company been in business? Can you explain what your previous experience is and what principles your SEO works under?

2. What other services do you provide besides SEO? Do you provide Internet marketing services?

3. What kinds of industries have you serviced previously? Can you provide me with checkable references?

4. How will you break down the cost of your services?

5. How much will I need to do myself for this SEO project to run smoothly?

6. How much time do I need to set aside to communicate with you during the process?

7. How long does it usually take to achieve results? (SEO is a gradual process, so a reply of anything under 6 months should be a red flag for you).

8. Is it possible to have someone from your firm teach us how to maintain your SEO once its done? (If they tell you that you wouldnt be able to do it yourself, then thats another red flag).

When they do send you a proposal on the project, you will want to make sure that it contains everything you spoke about, and everything else that should be there. If the answers to any of these questions are missing, you should walk away:

1. What specific services are included in the contract? Are any omitted? Make sure that what you discussed and wanted is included.

2. What is the name or position of the person you will be working with? Are you dealing with a salesperson, a designer, or someone else?

3. Are allowances made for communication with you? Are there any additional fees for contact?

4. How will the company be providing support? By email? On the phone? Do they stop supporting you after a month or so?

5. Are there extra fees for re-optimization or additional consulting? Is it really necessary? What maintenance is provided? If not, what is the additional cost of it? When maintenance is not included with the plan you need to be careful, as there are people who will charge you exorbitant amounts of money to maintain their optimization.

6. What reports are provided and how often will they provide them?

7. What are the total charges? Are there any additional charges?

By taking steps like this you will guard yourself against bad practices, you will also have a better understanding of the service you are getting, and you can easily compare offers to find the best one. But how can you tell if your provider is operating ethically? Well, thats is pretty easy. Heres a list of the sales pitches that bad SEO providers will use on you. If you hear any of these from a company, use someone else instead.

1. Guaranteeing top-ranking placements. This is impossible to do since the algorithms of the search engines change often, and any good SEO provider will tell you that.

2. Offering a service that includes the development of doorway pages. These designs often dont take your visitors ease of use into consideration, and search engines will ban your site if they catch you using them.

3. Telling you that you need more than one domain name pointing to your website. You can get banned for domain spamming, so dont take the risk.

4. Any company that says it will get thousands of inbound links to your website they will be using free-for-alls, which are very bad for your rankings.

5. Companies that offer you search engine submission software. Good positions always come from hand submission. If they tell you that submission by hand is not the best way to go, dont stick around.

Many SEO providers use unethical spam practices because they are cheap, easy to implement, and do provide very short-term results. Beware of any provider that uses them.

The best way to tell if the providers SEO practices are ethical is to ask: "Do these changes benefit visitors to my site as well making it more search engine friendly?" A good SEO provider will always say yes, as SEO is as much about the users as it is about the engines. After all, whats the point of a high ranking page if its nothing but unusable rubbish that will have people rushing for the Back button?

Dont be overwhelmed by these things, but always be on the look out to make sure that youre getting the best service possible. Good SEO companies can boost your sites traffic without resorting to unethical practices, and keep up with changes in the industry.