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The Hunt for the Perfect SEO: Testing Knowledge vs. Testing Patience
October 11, 2005
Over at Stuntdubl SEO Consulting, Todd Malicoat put together an exceptional post about how to hire an SEO company. It's essential reading for companies trying to decide how or whether to proceed with the SEO hiring process; we fully advocate prospective clients putting us through our paces, because we're certainly eager to prove our worth.
For example, in an earlier post, Todd suggests asking questions like these:
- What type of techniques do you use to achieve rankings?
- What type of risk is involved with this method?
- What will happen if our relationship is dissolved?
Absolutely right. Things get tricky, though, when we feel like we're being played. There's a fine line between proving we know how to do the work, and doing the work itself. Following are some questions that make us feel like we're soon to be on the wrong end of a something-for-nothing arrangement, under the guise of due diligence:
- What title would you use for this page?
- What lines of code should I add to my .htaccess file?
- What is the best way to use ISAPI_Rewrite on a 5-argument ASP query string?
- Should I move to a subdomain structure?
- What's wrong with my current link request?
As I've talked about before, a lot of mistrust lives in the ether between SEOs and their prospective clients. Client referrals, word of mouth, and verifiable case studies are among the best ways to establish the trust required to build a strong relationship.
All posts by Erik Dafforn
posted by Erik Dafforn at October 11, 2005 04:51 PM
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Comments
Thanks for the mentions Erik. Nice read. Bookmarked.
Posted by: Todd at October 12, 2005 10:00 AM