We have had mixed results with hiring a SEO. They are expensive but if they do the job right they could save you a lot of money in advertising costs. What has been your experience? Are they worth the investment or are you better off doing it yourself?

We hired a SEO for one of our sites and it moved over a couple of months from a PR 2 to PR 3. Recently we moved down to a PR 2 again. The problem in hiring a SEO in my opinion is how do you know if they are any good? Clearly you can look at their website and see where it shows up on the search engines for various keywords and some client referrals but it is still difficult. We are going to figure out how to do it on our own.

We hired a SEO to help us with our sites. They are basically structured the same but for different audiences bestman and maid of honor well the maid of honor site has a PR of 2 and the bestman site has a PR of 0. They both should be at least a PR 2 so much for the money we spent I do not think we will hire another one.

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We found a SEO on Outsourcing to Freelance Programmers, Web & Logo Designers, Writers, Illustrators on Elance and selected them because of their high rating I do not know of any other source or ideas that would help you determine how good they are. Our experience has been great we went from a PR 2 to a PR 4. The only question I have is how often we should use them they say we should use them every 6 months.

When I was looking for a SEO I found these ideas and questions helpful, hopefully you will too:

Find out how long the SEO company has been in business.


Does the SEO firm or its principals have marketing experience background?


Do they have long-term satisfied clients? Make sure they prove it with client testimonials and references.


Do they have detailed case studies to show you with verifible results of search engine positions they've achieved for clients?


Will they perform an analysis of your competition's websites to understand why the other sites rank highly?


What will the SEO company base their keyword recommendations on? Keyword research is a necessity to determine relevent, targeted keywords in order for a SEO campaign to succeed.


What are realistic traffic expectations for your site? Obscure keyword phrases may bring top ten or #1 ranking positions but if only a trickle of people search for the term each month, it likely won't result in increased sales.


Does the SEO differeniate between "traffic" and "qualified" traffic? Bulk unqualified traffic arriving at your site for irrelevant keywords are unlikely to convert to a sale or new customer. Does the SEO firm understand what it takes to create a sales conversion?


Does the SEO company adhere to search engine's posted best practises and a strict no-spam policy to avoid your website being penalized, possibly indefinitely, by search engines?


What methods will the SEO company use to increase traffic? Will they make changes to your existing web page coding or will they just be adding or revising meta tags? Will they be performing search engine optimization copywriting and editing to add relevant keywords to your visible page text? Will they be adding new pages, or possibly redesigning your navigation to make it more search engine friendly?


How many pages will they be optimizing in your website?


How much, if any, of their strategy relies on pay-per-click advertising and how much will that cost? Remember, pay-per-click is like leasing vs. buying a car. When you stop paying, the traffic discontinues. We sometimes recommend pay-per-click advertising for specific marketing strategies, but not for ongoing search engine visibility. Pay-per-click is not a long-term solution unless you have deep pockets. Obtaining "free" search engine positions in natural search engines, such as Google, is the preferred - and longer-term - route to traffic.


If the SEO company is offering high ranking guarantees - how is that possible when no-one can control or influence the search sites? Even Google's own published guidelines states: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO's that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a "special relationship" with Google, or that claim to have a "priority submit" to Google. There is no priority submit for Google."


How will your web site traffic be monitored and measured? What type of reports will you get and how often will you receive them?


How will your overall Return On Investment (ROI) be measured?

Thanks tella these were some great questions

This is bad experience of course.

But there is something else, the Google's PR is not so important. There are other much more important aspects like where your web site is in the search engine generic results. Not only Google's, but also Yahoo and MSN. How many visitors you get? These are not so related to the PR. PR is made more important then it actually is, and some SEO companies use it to convince the customers that they need their services.

You may no need their services for years if you do not change the old one or do not add new content to your web site. However, the recommendation is to add new content as often as possible and in this regard, you might need a permanent SEO services - every time you add/change something in the web site. Best of all subscribe for SEO monitoring or similar service. Let them have a few hours per month spend on your web site.

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mbm, do you have any recommendations for a SEO?

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Hi Capital Domains,

I am not sure if I understand your question right. Is it about recommending somebody who provides SEO services? If so, then my answer is that I have never used such service and from personal experience I can not recommend anybody. i am doing a kind of SEO for my web sites on my own.
However, attending the forum board at Platinax Internet: small business resources by entrepreneurs I think its owner Brian is good in providing SEO services, see Britecorp

I would recommend you checking some of the topics and contacting Brian right in the forum asking specific questions that could give you an indication how suitable are their services for you.

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Yes that was what I was referring to, I was just looking to try to find a SEO that had some experience and credibility in the marketplace. Thanks.

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