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What You Need to Know Before Choosing an SEO Consultant

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This is what is the most sought after question that has been discussed in most of the forums. Recently I had also come across such a question in one the forums I visit frequently. One of its members wanted to know how to hire an SEO as he needed one. Could that be answered so easily? How could one tell whether the SEO has done a good job at a fair price?

And Yeah!! That’s indeed a good question!!

SEO FAQ

With the deep infiltration of internet in every nook and corner of the world, with so many businesses and transactions taking place in a minute online, there is no doubt how so many SEO practitioners have come up!! There is a lot of demand for good SEO practitioners which means that their services don’t come cheap for us. And this also means that the fortune hunters are flocking the place. There are con artists who can relieve the money from their clients for doing nothing and leaving them out of cash. There are newbie who have great intentions but don’t have the right skill to produce what they promise and yet charge the rates as high as the most experienced SEO consultants. There are slackers who don’t know anything but say that they offer minimal SEO services at a premium price but left the clients with no results whatsoever.

This is really frightening!!!

So how well can we decide on the RIGHT SEO consultant?

Google rankings – may not be a good choice.

There are people who say that you can check the SEO consultant’s website in Google. The idea behind this is, if the SEO consultant can place their own company’s website top on the list of Google then they can also place our website top on the Google’s list and our business related search items.

But to state the fact, this may not be always true as search items differ. The optimization that works for one business for a particular market and for one search item may be different from another business or market. Rather it may become even counterproductive for another business which has different sets of search items and facing different competition. The techniques which are used to optimize one business to be at the top page in the search may not be applicable to your business. Moreover page ranking doesn’t always reflect the real integrity of the people behind the scenes as the page ranking can be reached high by any means fair or foul.

Don’t go only with the Google’s rankings. Though it may be interesting try to avoid using that as a quality measure. Don’t think that the ones at the top of the Google’s search page as the “best” items to be sought after if your budget matter a lot!!

Another idea that can be given a consideration! Why not go out locally, search for some SEO consultants who are available locally and have face to face discussions with them instead of waiting for the “big shots” to approve yours? This will work out especially when you are with a limited budget. This will enhance your knowledge about SEO also. And it can be done at the fair price that suits your budget. Indeed the services offered by the local consultants are no less than the big shots.

There are certain rules of thumb which can be taken for consideration before you approach your local consultants or waiting for top tier consultants’ proposals.

The top notch SEO providers are going to be really expensive as they are in high demand; which makes them demand for higher prices that the market could bear. So be careful with those people who get into a bargain agreement. Those who offer services at a very cheap rate may not be really effective and rather turn out to be money suckers. You are better off taking the money which you are going to offer such people and set it on fire as this would actually result in nothing.

If you are sailing on the other side, say if you have a very small and a simple site which aims at local people, you might as well go for a local SEO consultant who can offer at par services at affordable rates, rather than the top notch SEO providers and end up paying high premiums.

If your search provider says your site will be submitted to thousands of search engines and explains that your  site will become the top most searched item vaguely, then first drop such an SEO consultant from your consideration. Submitting to the search engines doesn’t result in anything useful.

We cannot expect immediate results from SEO. SEO is not instantaneous. We are looking for a marathon rather than a running race. Pay per click (PPC) or any other SEO technique can give you near immediate result but not organic SEO with long lasting result. So this means that we need not hurry in accepting proposals hurriedly. Take some time to stop and review the proposals, check the cost effectiveness and make a comparison among the ones which you have. Think and go through well in the received proposals. Give them a “sniff test”.

  • Check if the SEO’s plan proceeds step by step and if it stands up to a common-sense review? Do they really have some good plan for your site?
  • Does the SEO make false or stupid promises (like making your site the top most in the search result without changing any content of your site?
  • Does the SEO provider give you a clear picture of what they are going to do? Do they explain it effectively to you?
  • Can you explain what the SEO providers have explained to you clearly to all your web-savvy friends and relatives? When you explain, do they understand what you are planning to do?
  • What are the metrics they provide to make your site a success? Apart from rankings what other parameters are taken into consideration?

A corollary that can be learned: if an SEO consultant says that you need to take the right decision and think twice before declining him and says you will “miss out” something when you decline, then the first thing you need to do is to avoid and decline such an offer however good it may be!!! Whether you decline the proposal politely or otherwise, it’s up to you but never sign up for any of his so called “services”. And it also applies to those consultants who send out unsolicited mail or spammed your website’s feedback, then definitely he is not the right person you are looking out for. People with high reputations will never do such cheap moves for the sake of getting new clients.

And last but not least, ask for their work samples. Discuss with them the results of their practices, how they were able to achieve them. Even those who are relatively new to the profession should at least able to provide some personal sites or show some experience which can prove their understanding and quality of their work. You can very well check with them what lessons they have learned and how they are going to apply the same in your business site. Those who are really professional should not only show you samples of their work but also give you some references. This is not to say that you are a mistrustful cynic but rather you can get to know more when you are seeing with you own eyes and listen with your own ears.

Take these as some guidelines to help your decision making!

This original article is presented to you by LetsTalkSeo.com © 2009



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Filed Under: Analytics & Strategy, Keyword Research, Link Building, Optimization, Page Rank, Web Development

Tags: Good Job, Google, Google's rankings, high premiums, Optimization, Premium Price, SEO consultant, Seo Services

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