Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

I suggest you go based on personal references from other businesses... There are a whole bunch of hucksters working in this arena.

Contact me off line if you would like a reference.

Aaron,

As Mr. Hurtte says, through references. If you don't have personal references, ask for references for whom the company has completed SEO. Then for those companies, look for the results on major search engines - do a search on logical key words and look to see where they come up.

It's customary to charge up-front fees for "evaluation" and in most cases, the evaluations lead to "pointing out" of problems and offer little in terms of help. This is a selling tool to get you to ask, "Golly, how can I fix these things" and the evaluator says, "I'm glad you asked..." There are FREE evaluations available online that will give you this much. Some even have suggestions on how to fix things. I wouldn't pay for an evaluation.

https://www.buzzseo.com/contact.php
https://www.cybrconsult.com/SEO_free_evaluation.htm
https://www.topsitemakeover.com/evaluation.php
https://www.graphicseo.com/free-evaluation/

As with Mr. Hurtte, I have a good solid company that will give you good SEO service for about $2000 per year - five pages optimized. Having shopped around, this is competitive. Contact me off-forum and I can give you a contact name and information.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

You might want to check out this site. It's an SEO portal that helps obtain competitive bids from several SEO vendors.

https://www.semresource.com/


Steve

Lots of good advice so far. I would add a couple of things.

1. If you can, find a firm with experience in your industry. I had to go through way too many rounds on the keywords kicking out some ridiculous suggestions multiple times because the vendor I used didn't understand my business. It doesn't matter if the word will drive your search engine ranking if those who search on that term will have no interest in what you have to offer.

2. Make sure your team "likes" the firm. They should be spending a lot of time together. If it seems like the vendor is holding you at arms length, look elsewhere. They are only interested in the mechanics of the project and not getting to understand your needs.

3. The SEO firm will probably tell you they have product marketers on staff who will write your pages. Take this with a grain of salt. Again, if they don't understand your business there is no way they can write something that will resonate with your audience. Even if you do a good job with the key words, the pages are often gibberish.

I recently wrote a post on my blog about the perils of outsourcing SEO. https://themarketingsurvivalist.blogspot.com/2008/06/perils-of-outsourcing-...

All this said, I think outsourcing SEO is the right thing to do. I might even hire the firm I used again - now that they have been trained in my business. We also learned a lot in the process of working with them.

All the best!

Melissa Paulik