One of the most common problems when seeking out an expert to improve the search engine rankings for your site is that many website owners have a misunderstanding about what it really takes to improve a website's rankings.  Here's a quick example and a quick guide to what you should look for (at a minimum) from a good SEO campaign.

Case in point, I recently got a request from a potential customer who needs SEO work done on his website. The person indicated that he was "looking for an SEO expert to make changes on my website and improve its ranking and visibility".

The problem is that making on-site changes will only have minimal results on the site's rankings without also including other types of SEO work. Of course, those changes are important and should certainly be taken care of, but there are other factors that would also lead to better rankings and more traffic.

For instance, keyword research related to this site would identify additional keywords that the site should be optimized for. Then, content should be added to the site to improve the rankings for those keywords.

In addition, there are other "off-site" tasks such as link building that are known to be more important when it comes to a website's overall rank. Competitive research can help find sites that would make good link partners or at least help determine the types of sites from which links should be obtained.

Bottom Line: Every SEO project should include not only changes to the website but also in-depth keyword research, a content creation plan and a link building strategy. Otherwise, you're probably not going to get the best rankings and might even be wasting your money on an SEO scam.