An SEO expert is charged with understanding the various algorithms of the search engines and to design and or modify web pages based on the ever-changing standards of Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other major search engines. We do this so that our clients can feel confident that users will find them on the first page of any given search result.

The biggest challenge in being an SEO Expert is competiting against each other for the best positioning on the Internet. Everyone wants to be number one, so it's actually a good thing that search engines are now weighing in additional criteria outside of just quality content. Imagine what would happen if every company had an SEO expert and every page was optimized exactly the same, following the most current standard for search engine optimization.

So we are proactive in helping our clients secure quality incoming links, even though link development is not in scope of the responsibilities of an SEO expert. We understand the value of "Pay As You Go" directories, SEO forums and blogs, and most of all the value of our integrity to what we do.

Even though we compete against each other, you'll still find us in Usenet Groups collaborating and sharing ideas. Okay, most of the time our dialog is more of an argument driven by ego. But how can you call yourself an expert in any field without some level of ego? We are proud of our search engine rankings, and strive to provide better stickiness in the results pages by pinging RSS readers and syndicating content.

Affiliations and networking play a critical part in being an SEO expert. It's our affiliates who post links for us and our network for which we solicit our services. Most of the time we have to explain what SEO is multiple times to our website clients, and frequently we SEO Experts give away our strategies in order to prove that we know our way around the world of SEO. But in the end, it's our savviness that helps us drive incredible amounts of traffic to our sites and customer sites.

Any SEO expert you speak with should have some piece of literature they wrote themselves on the topic of SEO. They should provide you with a portfolio of sites and keywords targeted by each to prove that they can do the same for you. Both of these contingencies help define what each SEO expert considers their SEO Best Practices, all of which should be ethical strategies for acheiving optimal ranking in the search engines.

• All Pages Must Conform with W3C Standards
• Keyword Density is Never Abusive
• Always Include: Robots.txt, Sitemap.xml, & Urllist.txt
• Keywords are Prominent in the Title, META tags, & Headings
• ALT Tags and Title Tags are Not Forgotten
• Nomenclature is Fundamental to Being Indexed

As my portfolio of websites increases, the amount of freelance SEO projects I take on decreases. Because each site I work on is representational of my SEO expert abilities, I typically spend several hours above and beyond what I agree to in my contracts. Therefore, I have to limit my projects to businesses serious about their search engine placement.

As a leading SEO authority, my team is fully staffed with SEO Experts, Link Building Professionals, and now a former Google AdWords employee to handle PPC. Standard SEO/SEM account management includes the following:

• Over the Phone Consultations
• Page-Level SEO Analysis (if applicable)
• Site-Level Webcrawler-Friendliness
• Competitor Strategy Discovery
• Competitor Back Link & Industry Analysis
• Baseline Search Engine Ranking Report
• Discovery of the "The Best Keywords" to Target
• SEO Site Architecture / Framework Recommendation
• Additional Ranking Report (Post-Launch)

To keep competitors from stealing content from the design of client sites, I don't publish my portfolio. I will however share these SEO Expert examples with you during our consulatation. On the homepage you'll find one example of a project I worked on 2005. This site's ranking should prove that I really know my stuff.