Residual Victory Blog

How to Choose an SEO Provider is a matter of finding a union of comfortable communication, agreeable strategies, financial disclosure, a working relationship, trust, and shared goals.  When you choose a Search Engine Optimization Provider, you choose to put your business and future income in the SEO Provider’s hands.  Your website is important to you, so make sure you are important to your SEO.

Optimizing a website is not an overnight task, it can take months to come to fruition.  The industry is constantly moving forward and new advantages and techniques are always being discovered.  When you choose an SEO, make sure they are current with industry trends.  You could simply ask the SEO if they see any new trends as negative or positive. When you approach an SEO for questioning, have an idea of your budget ahead of time. Make sure pricing for updating is reviewed.  It’s difficult for SEOs to quote a price right away. Some SEOs have developed “packages” so they can give an estimate of the cost, but a true price (from a good SEO) can’t be determined until they evaluate your website.  If an SEO firm tells you they can up your page rank in 24 hours and guarantee you’ll be in first page search engine results by next week, politely say goodbye.

Price structures consist of hourly consulting, which runs $40 an hour for entry-level and up to $1000 for top corporate consultants.  Mid-tier runs about $100-$200 per hour.  Project based pricing is a flat fee which includes time, effort and staff variables. Other less common structures include Contract Services for a specific job, Price per Page, Profit Sharing, Monthly Retainer, Pay for Rankings, and Pay for Traffic. Options include contacting a college to see if  interns are available, or putting the work up for bid on a freelancer web site.
(Further pricing structure and the difficulties of each can be found at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-what-should-you-charge-how-much-should-you-pay.)

Realize that you might want to make changes to the strategy, and the SEO Provider you choose might come across difficulties that weren’t previously uncovered.  Talk about how changes will be handled in the contract before signing.   The size of your website and the difficulty of the project will be taken into consideration.  Whether it’s an SEO firm or an individual working on their own with low overhead will make a difference in pricing.

In project estimations, SEO Providers may take into consideration client communication, (yes, they may charge you to talk - so plan ahead), communication between team members (you may pay them to talk), baseline reporting (reports prepared for you on where you stand now), competitive analysis (this can be time consuming for some websites), tactical issues such as coding, links, evaluations, keyword research, review of existing pages and creation of new pages, submission to search engines and directories, editing pages, analyzing traffic counts, monthly reports, or any number of other issues.

The Search Engine Optimization Provider will want to look at the structure of your webpage, the URL propagation, design and functionality, code, meta tags, content and linking.  Make sure you spend time (even though it’s costing you it will be worth it in the end) discussing what strategies they intend to apply.  Remember, the goal is to get visitors to your site more than it is to have a high page rank or come up in the top ten search engine results.

Deciding when and How to Choose an SEO provider is an investment.  Do your research well.  Google their name and ask for examples of optimized websites.  Start a blog asking other webmasters you admire for references.  (Expect SEO Provider advertising.)  If it’s in your budget now, then now is a good time.  Communication, trust and shared strategies will indicate a wise investment, and your new visitors will confirm it.  Choose an SEO Provider carefully, and visitors will be your reward.