Guide: How To Interview For SEO Help

You have heard lots about SEO (search engine optimization). You may even know you need it. But how do you go about finding some with the right credentials and experience?  If you enjoy doing it yourself (DIY) checkout my 7 steps to SEO your blog.

When To Hire?

The best time is before you get started with a web site or blog. But, an effective SEO  professional can turn around any web site or blog so they begin receiving search engine visibility - being displayed in search engine results pages( SERP) for searches related to specific services or products.

Questions To Ask

Get more information by asking these seven essential questions. The answers will provide you with the measures to compare SEO candidates you are interviewing.

- Can you show me examples of your previous SEO work/results?

- Do you suggest organic results over paid advertising results?

- What time frame do you think I should use to expect some results?

- How will you measure the success of the SEO work on my behalf?

- What experience/success have you had on a national or global basis?

- What experience/success have you had in my geographical area?

- How will you explain the work you do om my site/blog?

Guidelines

While no one can guarantee you a #1 results on SERP, a decent SEO rep can get you on the first page of SREP. Ideally, you want to be one of the first three organic results on the first page of SERP.

There are two types of search results on each SERP.  First, and the most sought after, are organic results are accomplished by methods involving the content and coding of your web pages.  The second type of search results are paid advertising. Those include paying a fee to be placed on SERP for specific key words (EX: Google AdWords), or using Pay Per Click (PPC): advertisers pay when an ad is clicked.

What To Avoid

1. Link programs. Avoid submitting your site to hundreds of search engines. While high quality inbound links are important, sending massive submissions of your site to hundreds of search engines is irrelevant, and can even do more harm than good. A high quality link is one that has a PageRank of 6 or higher. PageRank (PR) is a scale to measure the online health of a site that includes many factors. An average site is a PR 3. The highest PR is 10, which is Twitter.

2. Obscure Key Words. Setup your key word strategy with short phrases that key in on features or benefits of your products/service. Never mind with your business name. New, potential clients are not searching on business names. In fact, they don't know your business name, what they are looking for is a solution to the question in their mind. You work is to think about what questions they will ask to find you. Or, what key words represent the features and benefits of your products?

3. No Specific Information.  Don't do business with a SEO rep who doesn't have a track record you can verify in a search engine. Ask them for search results they have done with other clients and then test those results yourself.  Get a plan, written or spoken, about the specific steps they will take with your site to reduce confusion about progress once the SEO effort is underway.


A Simple SEO Plan

• research key words
• write content for priority pages with key word strategy
• anchor text uses key words
• code the meta tags appropriately
• code images for key words
• make plan to create high quality links
• test meta tags for effectiveness
• test search engine for key word strategy and note placement to be used for future search engine results comparison
• index site

To help boost your search engine, you are welcome to have my Free SEO Guide - click here.