True experts are never anonymous: be careful who you hire for your SEO and PPC efforts

May 27 2010

I’ll just lay it out: don’t hire a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay Per Click (PPC) expert that you don’t know personally or know by reputation through their success with others you have done business with. If a stranger contacts you by email offering to cure your online search woes, ask yourself this: if your search engine presence is so awful, how do all these so-called SEO experts keep finding you? Yes, the search guys use Google just like the rest of us and they contact you through your website because they don’t respect your intelligence. Don’t hire those people.

If you want to know if SEO, PPC, social media or another online marketing initiative might work for your business, talk to people you know and see who they’ve worked with and what the relationship was like. And even with a high recommendation from someone you respect, spend some time with a prospective vendor before hiring. A true expert will be willing to spend an hour with you to make sure they can help you; a true expert will help you separate the fact from the myth and explain how winning campaigns are built; a true expert will tell you not to waste your time or money on an initiative that isn’t likely to help you even if they stand to profit from it. And be wary of anyone that appears to be selling a “silver bullet” solution that seems to be the answer to all that ails your online marketing.

I know this search engine business is complicated stuff… But that’s all the more reason to do your homework before you dive in. Talk to people about what you really need. You can even talk to me if you like; I’ll give you an honest opinion and I don’t even sell SEO. But don’t hire a stranger, not for this.