How to choose an SEO professional?

What criteria should I use when looking for an SEO expert?

Everyone claims to be an expert, but there are so many SEO strategies and so many people who think they are an expert (but really aren't).

How would you choose?

BTW - my site is www.selectcouponprogram.com. I need to come up in the top 10 for grocery coupons and supermarket coupons. So any ideas would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

Past work and history, if their name was recommended by other dedicated people. That's what I look for.

 

there is the simpleist way that work easyest. just go onto google and yahoo and type in somthing like.
"seo pro" or "website seo" or even seo and the top one "ex wikipidia" is the best at seo

 

Hi these are my thoughts on what you can do and why!

SEO to me relates to 2 things - high search engine positions and conversions.

Good Points - you have some keywords in your domain name and some of your subcategory pages. The content reads through ok and is informative.

First Advice would be Keyword Research.

The meta-tag information for all pages is poor and needs improvement

The title tag - used for a couple of your targeted keywords - needs to focus strongly at the onpage content and needs to be unique for each page.

The description tag - needs to be compelling and informative containing some keywords. A good description tag can help with click-through rates once you start achieving positioning.

H1 Tags - Could be greatly improved - targeted at your main keywords

H2 H3 Tags - Again could be used as a focus towards your targeted keywords.

You will need to create a link building strategy - Shopping related sites - blogs - forums - social networks

This article will give you some more background information http://www.seotechniques.co.uk

 

http://www.goodluckmate.com/search-...t-from-a-search-engine-marketing-company.html

Hope this help.

 

check if the prospective seo specialist is/are credible and if they have a good feed back from others.

 

Great information everyone please keep it coming!

 

thanks for posting this i too am looking for a seo professional and didn't want to get stuck with some spammer who gets my site blacklisted

 

Exactly right, if they claim they are an "SEO Expert" then hit the back button and keep looking. I can't really remember the last time i saw a self proclaimed SEO Expert and they knew what they were doing.

Actually this is something i've been meaning to write up is "tricks" to weed out the bad SEO's. Thanks for reminding me.

 

The truth is...there are no SEO experts at all. There is so much to test, read and learn every single day that I can't see any bloody expert out there.

There might be people more experienced than others, smarter than others, a bit more creative than others...but there are no experts.

Agreed with Sweetfunny...if you see a self proclaimed "expert" just hit the back button and keep on looking...

 

I think you must check there current website,...for you to know the status of there work.

 

Cool, thanks everyone. Now...do you have a favorite company you have used or can recommend?

 

Look for results, go out and find blogs, etc. that have had work done and have written non-biased reviews of the job.

 

Do you find that articles help a lot? I was thinking of hiring someone strictly to start out writing articles geared towards key words I provide. Just curious if that would be beneficial or not?

 

Asking them to give several of their successful examples/cases . Remember several cases , not only one .
Then you can compare their work and their seo skills with each other .

 

How many cases would you recommend...5?

 

Thats absolutely not true. Look at nationalpositions.com, top for seo company in google. Would you say they are the best SEO company? Would you be happy to have them work on your site? They are very spammy and in danger of something bad happening to their listings. seomoz wrote about them.

Or you could have a great SEO guy who sets up a new company, no matter what he's not going to rank his site on a new domain for a long time.

 

I agree, its really tough to figure out who is the "best" SEO company/person. All I can say is do your research beforehand and get plenty of examples and recommendations from former clients.

 

The most important thing about seo Professional can be his/ her experience. You can ask for his experience In Seo. For how many websites he has worked upon. What Tool he is using etc.

 

You can go through this ebook - it has different criteria within it.

http://www.pananadesign.com/Before Hiring An SEO.pdf