Keyword selection is your vital first port of call. When meeting an SEO professional for the first time remember you know your business better than anyone else. Your SEO professional might display a sound understanding of SEO principles regarding traffic generation, popular key words and phrases, overture research, keyword selection tools, keyword density and keyword position but how does this relate to your revenue streams – that's your call.

For example I recently inherited an SEO strategy for a specialist construction recruitment consultancy. Looking through the keywords that had been implemented by the SEO team to date I quickly realised a fatal floor. The simple search term ‘construction' may generate the most traffic for the company but why optimize for such a loose term when a visitor searching ‘construction+jobs' clearly represents a more direct lead for your organization. You know your business model, market place and target audience so trust your business insight – don't get blinded by SEO ‘science'.

Exactly what am I paying for?

I like to ask myself this question from time to time. The answer should be a greater search engine presence and lead generation. There are a few simple tools you can use to address this – completing your own searches, using the Google link search feature, checking your ‘Google Page Rank' etc but you're paying a specialist to manage expectations so make sure your expectations are being met.

For me reporting at least once every two weeks is the main provision I want to see on any agreement. This gives you the opportunity to compare actual results with what you were pitched at the start of the campaign but also to analyse your SEO strategy against your competitors. You could also install a dedicated link for your SEO team to use to track actual results. Be sure to analyse the reports, run a few spot checks on the results. Remember you want to see your website moving up the search engine results pages. Why should you be paying for little or no progress especially at the start of your SEO strategy where scope for improvement is huge?

Review and analysis of your existing website and all of it's pages and features is the second provision I look for. Part of this process will give you chance to run through your existing strategy to date and give your new SEO team the opportunity to demonstrate a sound understanding of how SEO fits into your overall marketing business model. Then your SEO team can put together a sound evaluation of what you have done well, where improvements can be made and their strategy moving forwards. Your web development team can then make any amendments (or total rebuild) to the website and/or website content, introducing meta tags and search engine friendly features based on these recommendations and your SEO team can set about the real bread and butter of SEO - back links & link trading.

Your SEO is now being managed effectively, your business expectations are being met but how does this strategy really move your business forwards.

Inside three months your website should be listed in the first 5 Google page results depending on the level of competition for keywords in your sector. This represents an excellent level of visibility for your product or service offering and if your new SEO team has done their homework with your help sales leads should start to filter through. For this type of business model it is easy to address the success of the SEO campaign i.e. how many more units have we sold since we introduced our new SEO strategy.

In addition your advertising service offering becomes a lot more appealing. If you are a community forum chances are your registered uses will increase, if you are selling advertising the level of exposure for your advertisers will be increased, if you are booking appointments or generating leads or raising money or distributing surveys – all benefit from increased exposure. The best way to really drive home SEO is to integrate into your service offering. I will use some examples.

If you are supporting the marketing of an online IT forum for business managers and you receive a good advertising lead from an supplier, say IBM for example chances are you are dealing with a tech savvy animal who will have specific questions regarding your forum i.e. number of visitors, relevant website audits, registered users, newsletter circulation etc. Providing you have a sound organic SEO strategy in place advertising on your website already represents 60% more exposure and better return on investment than most other forums in your sector. As your registered users and newsletter circulation continues to grow as does your quality of service an earning potential.

You might be supporting the marketing for a jobs board for architecture practices. Assuming these guys have an excellent eye for design and building regulations and care little for the intricacies of SEO – exactly how does your new SEO strategy add benefit to your service offering to them and how do you communicate it to architecture practice decision makers. The simple answer is a more prominent position on search pages, means more relevant architects looking for work on your website and greater exposure for the simple and unique factors that make your architecture practice the best for qualified architecture professionals.

A with most other marketing initiatives it is crucial to make sure your SEO is being managed effectively and generating the results you set out to achieve. The result is active lead generation and increased after sales assurance for all of your leading clients.