Have you spent hours upon hours trying to get higher search engine rankings with no results? Chances are you've probable thought about finding a search engine optimization company that will do the work for you. With so many search engine optimization companies on the Internet, how do you find a good one? Here are some things to consider when choosing your optimization company:

1. Guarantees
No one should guarantee a "search engine ranking." Search engines regularly change their algorithms. What works one day might not work the next day. However, you should look for companies that guarantee "refunds" if increased rankings are not achieved.

2. Cloaking and Gateway/Doorway Pages
Search engines have made it very clear that the web page delivered to the search engine spider and the web page delivered to the end user should be the same. If not, the search engines consider it spam and may have the site promptly removed from the search engine database.

If the search engines ever decide to ban cloaking, stealth or IP delivery, you will be safe if you never used it. However, it is a good idea to build "content" rich doorway pages optimized for the search engines if necessary. Content rich doorway pages are simply pages on your site that are built to have certain keywords (on that page) rank high in the search engines. This "doorway" page links to your main site or homepage. But, they must have some kind of value and some text. Just having the meta tags and the body text saying "Free stuff - Click Here!" could get you into trouble.

3. Search Engine vs. Directory
Be sure your promotion specialist knows the difference between a search engine and a directory, and will keep the two types of web sites separate in their promotion strategies. Your promoter should separately submit to Yahoo!, LookSmart, Open Directory, Go Guides, and Snap. Unique strategies should be used for getting listed in each of them. Remember, directory submissions are viewed by humans. It's very important to locate the proper category and write the proper title and descriptions for you web site.

4. Monthly Fees
Beware of web site promotion companies that require monthly fees or do not offer full refunds! How do they make you pay monthly fees?

1. They will build hundreds of doorway pages for your web site. But guess what? They are probable going to be hosted on their web site. If you stop paying, you lose all your positions instantly!

2. They offer pay-per-click rankings. But guess what? The second you stop paying, you lose all your positions. This method can also be very expensive unless you have a very high click to sales ratio.

I hope you find these tips useful and I wish you much success!