Hiring an SEO Consultant

• By AllBusiness.com
• On 8:00 am EDT, Monday June 8, 2009

Getting your Web site ranked at the top of search results is critical for attracting visitors and boosting your business, and the only way to do that is through search engine optimization (SEO). If you have no search optimization experience, hiring a search engine optimizer is a must.

SEO consultants can help you develop or restructure your business Web site through designing and writing content and organizing it in such a way that it gets picked up by major search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. But not all SEO consultants are created equal. For every qualified, professional SEO consultant out there, there are two types of consultants waiting to help you throw your money away: the unqualified consultant with little experience and the scammer who preys on gullible business owners. To make sure you hire the right consultant to do the job, there are some things to look for and avoid.

What to Look For

Fortunately many reputable SEO consultants exist. One of the best ways to find one is through referrals from people you know. If this isn't possible, you want to look for SEOs who can provide examples of previous work, will share referrals from past clients, and are willing to provide detailed information on their recommendations and changes. Being upfront about their pricing structure is also a good sign.

There are many ways SEOs charge for services. The most common are hourly, project-based, and contract service fees based on individual services. There is such a wide range of rates that it's difficult to determine an average SEO price, but most entry-level consultants charge around $40 to $50 an hour, and most midtier consultants charge around $100 to $200 an hour. Project-based pay is based on their estimate of the number of hours it will take to complete the project and the level of difficulty. Contract services can range anywhere from $100 to $2,000 for a keyword search package and $500 to $20,000 for a manual link building campaign.

What to Avoid

Some consulting firms use shady tactics to sell their services and should be avoided at all costs. Not only will you lose money by paying for useless services, you'll run the risk of getting your Web site flagged and permanently banned from Google and other search engines. The biggest red flag to watch for is SEOs who use black-hat techniques, the general term for deceptive tactics designed to trick search engines (a good way to get your site banned). The following will help you spot a dishonest or black-hat SEO:

• Unsolicited e-mail: Never reply to consultants who contact you out of the blue. This email is almost always spam.
• No. 1 guarantees: No one, no matter how good they are, can guarantee a No. 1 ranking. Don't trust anyone who promises rankings, claims to have a special relationship with certain search engines, or wants to charge you for "secrets."
• Doorway pages and "shadow" domains: These are considered spam and will get you banned from search engines if you get caught. Also, avoid similar techniques such as deceptive redirects, mass submitting of your site to search engines, and schemes that involve link popularity.
• Useless keywords: If an SEO offers to sell you ownership of certain keywords, run the other way. You also want to make sure they're not focusing on keyword phrases or obscure search engines that no one searches for or uses anymore.
• Secretive tactics: It's your right, and your responsibility, to know what your SEO is doing. If your SEO consultant isn't willing to explain his or her techniques, it's probably because something devious is going on.

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