I get lot of queries for SEO work but I don’t take up SEO work for clients but I see lot of my clients complain about the so called SEO experts they have hired have not done anything for them and have already charged handsome amount of money. So how you know before hand that the SEO person you are looking to hire is genuine and knows his job? Asking few simple questions to the so called SEO experts to see what they know about SEO.
1. How long they have been into SEO
The first and the most important thing you should understand is SEO is not an overnight task and they have to be in it for quite a long period of time for making any success. So ask the same to your SEO provider? How long have you been doing this? Verify the same with their domain who is information and see if they have been doing SEO for so long.
2. How much they have worked SEOed themselves rather than clients?
The main reason I do not take up SEO job is I am too busy with SEO of my own forums and blogs and if I can get my site ranked well I would make more money than any client can pay me. Do they think the same and have their own site or product which they rank very well for competitive terms
3. How transparent are they when it comes to working for you?
The next thing you should ask is how they will go about getting good rankings for your site. It may not be exactly what they would do but mainly the strategy. Let them do some keyword research or even go beyond it to analyze your competitors’ site and their strategy. If they talk about too many jargons like PageRank / NoFollow get familiar with them.
To add to this question many SEO experts (as they liked to be called) tend to give that this is something where they have some backdoor entry into Google and can rank you pretty well in Google by paying them and they cannot disclose anything beyond this. This is complete bullshit and you should never even think about replying to such experts. Google never wants their users to get results influenced by such sick minded people and never even encourages such people.
Bonus Question: What they know about what not to do in SEO?
People always like bonus and it’s my turn now to give one. Ask them about what they should avoid when it comes to SEO and see how well they are aware of blackhat SEO and how they avoid them.
Apart from clients there will be many SEO Experts (:D) reading this and so don’t be fooled if people impress you very well with answer to the above questions. Read testimonials of previous clients and try contacting them using either phone numbers or even emailing them.
Final Thoughts
There is no exact science to SEO but then its not rocket science as well. Anybody looking to hire SEO experts should know the basics of SEO to judge the SEO experts. Share your SEO story in comments?
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Shabir,
I run a blogger blog. I have somewhat good ranking in google but do not have any page rank.
Is it necessary to have PR to improve my adsense revenue? If so, how much does it cost for normal SEO services ? Any idea?
No. PR is something that does not have any relevance whatsoever. Also for your blogger blog I will recommend to read Blogspot Vs WordPress
nice one sir,
I loved the second point “How much they have worked SEOed themselves rather than clients?”. Really i have seen many SEO company’s who have hired other SEO company for themselves. I don’t know what they do with their clients site.
Very true Sanjeev and I have lot of offers from many SEO companies to be their SEO person.