There are few things as exciting as starting your own company, especially when various salespeople start calling to vie for your business. However, it is important to be discerning when choosing what services you will use to market your company, especially if you are looking to expand your marketing efforts and do not understand how online marketing works. As a general rule, the one type of company you want to avoid is the one offering guaranteed search placement.

The Placement Myth

Contrary to what the marketing rep might say, there is no foolproof way to quickly get a company to the top of a Google search. Many unscrupulous individuals use this strategy to get a business owner’s attention. They claim to be working for or with Google and offer to help get your company at the top of the search results. Of course, none of them can explain exactly how they would do this, but they sure charge a pretty penny for it.

When you receive these types of calls, it is important to remember that this is simply a myth. Google, and every other search engine, uses a specific algorithm to sort search results–there is no short cut to the top of the results. Instead, you must utilize the latest search engine optimization tactics, which takes time and understanding of how the algorithm works.

Building Custom Content

In reality, one of the most powerful ways to increase your search ranking is to create plenty of keyword-optimized, custom content. This content will get indexed by search engines and help improve the rank of your page. More importantly, quality content is more likely to get picked up by bloggers or other web owners and linked to their site. These incoming links will improve your page rank and help to boost your search engine position.

The simple truth (which most experts are afraid to admit) is that online marketing is not an exact science. There are measures that work, but it is not realistic to think you can determine how quickly or how effective they are going to be. That said, when you engage a true marketing professional you can be assured of more traffic to your site and more traffic that can be converted to leads. At the end of the day, that is what everyone is looking for.