Are you a website owner and do you feel overwhelmed when it comes to search engine optimization? I don't blame you. You probably get daily sales pitches from SEO practitioners every day. But how do you weed out the good SEO firms from the bad ones to be able to make the right choice and hire a firm that could really help your business website?

It's actually quite simple. Most SEO firms will claim to be able to get you first page rankings on internet search engines for your chosen keywords. If an SEO firm guarantees first page rankings its only logical to reason that their own website will have first page rankings for their own targeted keywords. After all, why would they promise you first page rankings if they cannot even achieve those desired results for themselves?

Take the SEO firms #1 target keyword. Go to Google and search it. If you see their website displayed on page 1 of search results you can be assured that youre dealing with a good SEO firm. If they are not on page 1 of results, don't bother with them; hire an SEO firm that is.

"But how do you know what the SEO firms top targeted keyword is?" you may ask. That is quite easy to look up as well. Follow these instructions:

1. Go to the home page of the SEO firm's website. Right-click your mouse on an empty part of the home page.
2. Scroll down to where it says "view source" and click on it
3. A note pad with a lot of writing will pop-up. Go down a few lines and stop at the line that begins with "Meta name = keywords content." This line will display a list of keywords. The first keyword is the main targeted keyword that this SEO firm has targeted to try to rank well on internet search engines.