What to look for in a good SEO specialist

Hi there,

I'm in the process of hiring an SEO specialist to assist with page rankings for a new site.

My background is in PPC and I haven't done a great deal of work in the SEO space. I'm looking for a specialist to perform linking building and on/off page optimisation. The site is finished however final copy hasn't been published.

The caliber of candidates thus far has been quite impressive, however I'm a little concerned about the potential language barrier between ourselves and some of the providers. I'm particularly concerned about article writing and public commenting etc that may turn out in broken english.... There's a few great US based agencies so I think I might stick with them.

Anyway, what should I be looking for in a great well rounded SEO expert?

Thanks for the advice.

 

Hi, I just pm'd you with details of my servies and an offer I currently have.

 

Hi, look in a seo previous work and experience in field seo line.

 

This should help www .google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=35291 (remove the spaces)

 

Content quality can be a barrier only if you don't make it clear from the start as to the level of proficiency you're looking for. Once you're upfront with your needs, they will accommodate. Just be clear that articles which have not been edited are unacceptable - period.

Personally, I never work with US or UK writers anymore because they are too expensive and stuck up (that's IMO). I've had US writers ask $150 for an article which would require about 1 hour of work for someone in a 3rd world country or 30min for them - it's just insane. I've even had a US based writer scam me on content, outsourcing it to India while she charged up rates 10x what she paid. It all goes full circle mate.

One more thing for you to consider - if the company you're working with does NOT rank in top 10 for 'search engine optimization' then you have no business working with them. After all, if they are SEO "gurus" why don't they rank for the core KW they are trying to promote? something to think about...

 

If I were looking for articles for my US site, I would NEVER use someone for whom English is not their native language. It will show in the final result unless YOU are going to edit the article yourself when all is done, in which case I would question WTH you paid someone else to do it in the first place.

$150 for a well written article that actually offers your visitors useful information with a different twist is NOT that unreasonable. Frequently writers have to first spend a couple of hours researching the topic before they can even sit down to write. Then they write, edit, reedit, etc. It takes time.

What you pay for an article should depend on the reason you are generating the articles in the first place. If you simply want spider food for the crawlers with the hopes of getting the content to rank for certain longtail keywords then by all means, go ahead and pick someone in China or Inda to write you an uninformative, broken English article for $10 or whatever. But don't be surprised when the article ranks on page 1 at Google but the traffic it attracts never converts into a sale (or whatever you consider a conversion) because as soon as someone clicks on the link in the organic SERPs and goes to your page, they realize it's 'junk'.

If you're generating articles to submit to article submission sites to build backlinks then perhaps not so well written, not so informative articles in not so perfect English grammer might be OK.

However, if you are generating content because you are trying to develop a professional site that visitors will want to visit repeatedly, a site that they will tell their friends about, a site that other webmasters will want to link to naturally because they feel it will provide their site visitors a benefit, and a site that you can be proud to show others then I suggest you find skilled writers who have English as their native language... AMERICAN English if it's a US site.

There are lots of good writers in the US that can write these types of articles for reasonable rates. I just had a conference call with a site on Friday called Helium. You can submit a request to have an article written under their Marketplace. Many authors there will write articles for you. You review them... and IF you decide you like one, you typically pay $35-50 per which is very reasonable. If you like multiple articles submitted you can buy them as well. If you don't like any of them you don't have to buy any. Authors are rated based on previous submissions. It's a similar business model to Top Coder only for writers where they compete for business. Authors in the non-marketplace portion of the site are incented to write good articles because the company shares ad revenue with the writers.

Generally, you get what you pay for...

 

How exactly does a small business owner afford $150/article? That's insane. Even with research, $50 is a high price for general articles. English teachers in the states, grade 1-6 are making about $12-15 per hour depending if they are in a union, college grads in english literature make about _____ McDonalds job.

I've worked with indian writers who have better research skills then the "1st" world counterparts and they work harder too. It's all relative.