We have recently been putting together an SEO "Buyers Guide" that is aimed at companies who are looking at hiring an SEO. The guide outlines some SEO facts and figures as well as detailing common SEO scams and unethical practices and gives a list of questions every client should be asking their potential SEOs. The seo guide can be downloaded from here - SEO Buyers Guide Hopefully it'll help people to get a better understanding of the market and avoid making some costly mistakes. I'm sure there are a few contentious points in there, so any comments/suggestions at this stage are welcome
Matt this is excellent. For those who haven't read it yet it's 9 pages long and really easy to dip in and out of. There some execllent advice about how to avoid being scammed by an SEO company and also about being careful not to tie yourself into long term agreements without first experiencing the quality of the work the SEO company undertakes. This would be an excellent guide for newbies or novice website or blog owners who need to understand more about the whole SEO sector. Well researched, presented and easy to read. I've added to your rep, nice job. If you like it, I'd suggest you do the same. I should also say that I have no links to this product in any way shape of form.
Great guide, nicely laid out and easy to read well done my 2c Would be useful to date/time reference your 79% market share pic (always useful for readers to know date as you could be quoting 1995 data..) page 7, 'how frequent is communication' or something along those lines? people I know really make this a key requiremet... want to be kept up to date (even if masses of work aren't being completed), and you should definitley find that out off an SEO
Thanks Nick - some good points. I'll add in a reference for the serach stats. I 'think' those were some '97 figures that I found, though Google consistantly seems to be in the 80-90% range over the past few years. Great point on the communication frequency - I'm a bit disappointed I left that out
Perfectly Written Matt , One who follow you book will never get scammed easily I have outsourced many seo orders all failed ,so im doing all on my own I would add my outsourcing experince dont go with australians dont go with indians (though im an indian its fact many indain scammers )
I've just finished reading the PDF file. This is a great guide for people who are looking to hire SEO services. It is also a good guide for people who are just starting to offer SEO services. Cheers!
I'm sure there are lots of good SEOs in Indian and Australia, but as with every country there are also lots of bad ones. Just make sure you ask the right questions and you'll minimalise the chances of being scammed. I would also say it's important to hire an SEO in your regio. There are lots for regional differences, not only in serach engines and geolocation, but also in language in the copywriting and also communication issues.