In an effort to help bring long term SEO-SEM buyers together with ethical and value driven SEO-SEM sellers, on 7/26/05 I posted "Considerations Of Buyers Of Search Marketing". In it were two links to "Honest SEO". This non-commercial and educational site has an anonymous author who says "My name is not on the site and I registered the domain by proxy so this domain is not connected to me any way." How refreshing it is to see this along with "This site is a free and honest SEO resource which was created to educate people about the SEO without offering any sales pitch or preferred sellers list." My only plea to the author is to update the downloadable "report" from 8/1/04 (even if it is only minor changes).
After reading many articles and forums for about eight years, it is indeed refreshing to see an SEO-SEM Consultant that ONLY WANTS TO GIVE help and education. That author says the reasons for an SEO to write an article are: "Work well to teach people about SEO; Help build trust with prospective clients; Introduce your work to a new group of people; Help build link popularity". These reasons are valid, but as the SEO-SEM market gets bigger and more competitive, I've discerned way too much "posturing" in SEO-SEM articles by too many SEO-SEM authors.
Even in a Search Engine Watch Forum topic (SEM Industry Biggest Growing Pains) a respected moderator (Nacho) has as #14: "SEOs are becoming a “in-fighting and backbiting” dog eat dog competition." This is certainly a generalization and not true for every SEO or SEM Consultant. But, I did observe an "overzealous competitive spirit" in certain SEO Consultants at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose this past August. Potential buyers of SEO need to be aware of this kind of competitiveness.
Maybe the best way to do this is to embrace what "Honest SEO" says about "Why Ask SEO Questions?: "There are usually no guarantees with SEO, but you stand a far greater chance of finding a good, honest SEO if you ask around and learn a small amount about SEO versus picking an SEO firm at random." Yes, you should "ask around", but do it with clients of SEO vs. SEO's themselves, or anybody that has a reciprocal, or financial benefit motive for a SEO referral. The reciprocal motive may be OK, but you never know when the referral is more a matter of "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours."
However, no SEO Consultant is going to let you talk to one of his clients that will bad mouth him in any way! So, you need to go to businesses not directly in competition with yours, but in your same general industry, and ask them some tough, direct questions. These may be: "Would you contract to them again, or do you plan on staying with them?", "What don't you like about dealing with them?", "How did you evaluate, specifically, their cost effectiveness with you?, and "How good was their ongoing communication with you?"
"Honest SEO" has some great questions that you should ask a number of prospective SEO Consultants before you contract with them. I suggest writing down the key points in their answers in as much detail as you possibly can. Don't be afraid to ask them to slow up a bit, so that you can make sure you have their answers down accurately. One question I would add is "How do you calculate cost effectiveness, and Return On Investment ("ROI") for your clients?" What other questions would you ask?
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