Hiring a Consultant

When hiring a SEO consultant, you should look very seriously at the credentials, and their reputation. This is very serious because a good SEO consultant is costly. This is a serious investment that can make you or even break you. With spending up to several thousands of dollars, you definitely want to insure a good ROI. If not, your business can be damaged significantly for the great loss, or at least suffer some with spending so much money with no return.

With that said, the following are key things to look for when hiring a SEO professional:

1. The requirement of due diligence– while there are many companies/individuals out there that claim to specialize in search engine optimization, you have to make sure that you are hiring a reputable and proficient professional in this field. They must be experienced, and have good reviews/testimonials from their customers. They must have the proper training and certification, and they must keep abreast of the different guidelines concerning SEO, because the guidelines change in some aspects sometimes. They also must know about Google algorithms, the amount of keyword density to use, site metrics, and other tools. This is extremely important because you are investing tons of time and money into hiring someone who has the power to hurt or prosper your business.

With this in mind, you must interview potential applicants for hire, and ask tons of questions. You also must verify their training and certification, and perform research about their reputation, reviews on their services, and testimonials given by their previous customers and agencies.

2. Whether or not the SEO consultant contacts you first – one red flag that a SEO consultant is not what he/she is cracked up to be is when that person contacts you first. With SEO being in so much demand these days, they wouldn’t have as much time to contact you first especially if they have tons of clients working with them in which would happen due to their great services. Otherwise, a SEO company that doesn’t have as much clients may be due to substandard services, or they are new in the business. Not to say a new SEO business is not trustworthy- the market are just not aware of them yet. So, if considering to hire a new SEO business, they should have proof of great training and certification, a great resume of work experience in the field, and good recommendations. Additionally, a SEO consultant who has been in business for quite some time shouldn’t spam you offering free site analysis, because if they are proven to be great in SEO, they wouldn’t have time to contact you. They would be in much demand if they are known to provide great results. Therefore, if a SEO consultant spam you, it’s important to delete those emails.

3. Good SEO consultants are expensive– when any product or service is in great demand, you can expect the price to be higher. This is the same for quality search engine optimization services. SEO is expensive, and it normally is charged per hour. The prices can be $200 per hour and more for good, quality SEO services. They may be some that may charge as low as $75 per hour or more, but some of the good ones start at $200 per hour. There are, however, some professionals that charge around $500 to $1000 per hour, and they do have a lot of business.