Webmaster Talk is not affiliated with the freelance SEOs who post here. We simply provide this forum for your benefit and convenience, because we recognize that many who post here will need this service. Even though we can't censor every post here to prevent fraud, we want people to succeed. Consider this a buyer's guide.
The first question is the easiest. Do you want to do SEO yourself or pay someone to do it for you? It's not very difficult per se, but it's very time consuming. If you want to DIY visit the SEO Forum where you can learn everything. Below is for people who decided it's best to hire someone. - Know the scope of what you want or need. Do you need link building, do you need programming (say, if you have SessionID query string parameters making it hard for Google and Yahoo spiders), do you need copy writing, design, link bait, to be introduced to people? If you just say "I'll pay you to make me rank good" many consultants will do more work than they truly need to. Provide as much information as possible about your goals: increased sales, more leads, 50% more traffic, etc. Rather than focus on the "what do I think I want", focus on the goals and let the SEOs determine how to reach those goals. Good SEOs will understand which services fit best, and most SEO customers probably won't.
- Think about keywords before talking to any SEO. Of course you should be open to their advice - that's part of what you're paying them for. But you should have a good idea what keywords work for you and what don't. I can get you #1 at Google for the keyword "daljadlgheogeogipq" for $900. But that would be the dumbest $900 you ever wasted. It's important to balance how competitive a keyword is with how many people search for it.
- Promised Search Rank = Scam. Google says it themself. No one can promise to get you on page 1, so if they do they're lieing. Nuff said.
- If they contacted you first, don't bite. If they're good at SEO, they did a good job SEOing their own site. If they need to spam to find business they can't help you. Along the same lines, if they demand a link from your site ("SEO by Joe") they don't have the skills to pay the bills.
- Ask what they plan to do. You don't need every little detail but read Google's webmaster guidelines so you know what not to let someone do. These are only guidelines, not laws. But you should only break them after seriously considering the risks against the potential benefits. If you hire a SEO firm who breaks the guidelines on your behalf, Google will punish your site, not your consultant.
- PageRank isn't how pages rank. If a SEO is hung up on PR, don't hire them.
If you would like to leave comments, questions, or suggestions, please do so in the comment thread. You'll be shocked at how knowledgable and willing to help ( for free!) some of the forum members are.
Last edited by Learning Newbie; 10-10-2007 at 07:41 PM..
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