Internet traffic is a key component in the success of any online business. Running an online business without having any traffic is like running a store in the middle of nowhere. If you don’t have traffic, you are likely to fail. Traditional advertising channels usually don’t work in online world and you may need to hire a professional to help build traffic to your site.

Finding and hiring an SEO expert or Internet marketing firm is not an easy task. There are thousands of internet marketers, SEO experts, link builders and paid search experts out there. Each one of these is important to grow your business but for most startup businesses, an ideal SEO firm or consultant would be a combination of all.

Before you hire someone, you also need to have a fairly good understanding of your expectations and timeline. Most often business owners seek help when they are desperate and their business is on the brink of collapse. This is usually a very difficult time and if you’re heavily involved running your business; you may not have time to step through the hiring process. In summary, if you’re looking for overnight results, you’re likely to find someone who would probably cause more harm to your site instead of helping with SEO. In fact, in worst-case scenario, you may even get banned from search engines.

In order to make a right decision, you need to understand few things. Some of these items are just ‘common sense’ but it is not that “common” now a days.

1. What would be the final result?
You must have some understanding of results before you hire an SEO firm or consultant. Don’t just ask for “first page” ranking. Ask for specific “keywords” to be ranked on first page. Negotiating just on “first page” alone is like negotiating on monthly car payment alone without negotiating on the price. As you already know that car dealers love negotiating on monthly payment. That way they can always meet your needs by expanding the loan period on a car loan. You don’t want your car loan to look like your home mortgage loan so start with the price. In Internet marketing world, that’s equivalent to “keywords”. Focus more on keyword research, relevant traffic and a steady increase in traffic that turns into sales.

2. How about design or layout changes to my website?
There are times when your website needs to be fixed first before any SEO work can begin. However, if your SEO partner has no or limited knowledge of “Website Usability” or “User Experience”, end results might not make a difference. Ask if you’ll have to pay for it separately. Most often, SEO experts do not do web design work so they might hire someone else to do design changes and stick you with the bill.

3. Check Credentials
There is a good reason why certification programs exist. You are usually better off hiring a certified professional instead of hiring someone with years of experience with no certification. For example, Google has an “AdWords Certified Professional” designation for PPC experts who have passed the example and have maintain certain level of customer business in PPC area.

4. How about link building?
Backlinks to your website are considered as “votes” in search engine terminology. They also have a direct impact on your Google PageRank and Search Engine Result Page (SERP) ranking. In recent years, “paid links” have taken over the link building business. While search engines discourage this practice and even penalize “link farms”(websites with thousands of paid outgoing links), there is little you can do. Ask questions about link building and how your SEO partner is planning to accomplish backlinks. You may also for reference and recent example of their link building campaign to get a better feel.

5. Scope of the work and timeline
You need to have a clear understanding of the work that will be performed and what you’re going to pay. It is better to have a written contract instead of just verbal commitment. SEO work is usually broken is two phases: One time SEO work and Ongoing SEO work. Make sure you understand the cost of ongoing monthly SEO because without monthly SEO, long-term results are impossible in a highly competitive market segment. Remember SEO is a time consuming process and an ongoing process. Ask about the reports and feedback that you will receive. It might be a good idea to ask for a sample report to see if it is easy to understand and have clearly defined goals.

6. Your role as a business partner
SEO work is not a one-side commitment. You just can’t hand over the work to your consultant or partner firm and isolate yourself. You must provide ongoing guidance on your business direction, business practices and long-term goals. Try to get involved in the process because an educated client is always a better customer. Make sure your expectations are real. In SEO business, you usually get what you pay for. Remember, a $5/hr SEO expert may sound tempting since you’re not bleeding heavily financially by paying them but remember people bleed to death from thousand paper cuts too. Set incremental goals early on to make sure you are working with someone who can deliver.

Tags: Hiring SEO experts, Internet Marketing, On going SEO, One time SEO, SEO Partners

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.