How to Really Irk Your SEO Consultant
Search engine optimization is not easy. If you’re looking for serious results, it’s something that’s most likely going to require some sort of professional. Whether that’s an outside, agency, an in-house person, or a consultant, if you want to do your own search engine optimization you’ll need a lot of training, often too much for someone with other responsibilities to handle.
When you hire an SEO consultant, you’re hiring someone to take the reins from you and provide quality results that will increase your bottom line. You’re not hiring some 16-year-old intern who has taken a class on SEO; you’re hiring a professional, whose career is dedicated to helping clients increase their search engine rankings. To keep your SEO consultant happy, make sure you avoid all of the following.
Demanding Quick Results
You’re hiring a person to offer you a service, and as such can expect to see some results. But demanding results? That’ll leave your SEO consultant fuming. You have a right to results, but you don’t have a right to quick results. If your SEO consultant promised you quick results, you might want to reconsider who you decided to work with.
Search engine optimization is like going to the gym. If you go to the gym once every few weeks, you won’t see any sort of results. But if you’re hitting the gym everyday, in the long run you’re going to get the results you want. The same is for SEO. It takes time, and it’s not something that can be accomplished in three days of hard work. If you chose a professional SEO consultant with a proven history of success, you will get results, and they will come in due time.
Not Allowing for New Content
Content is one of the most important parts of any SEO strategy. It’s often what can make or break an SEO campaign, and having good content can mean your rankings and sales start to climb. If you aren’t an SEO professional, you might not understand why content is so key to a campaign, but it is key.
One thing that really irritates SEO professionals is when clients will not allow you to post new content or make it difficult to tweak existing content. In 100% of the cases your SEO campaign will require content changes and additions. Don't have a blog? You'll need one. You have to be willing to commit to content creation. It's a truly great way to increase your traffic over time.
Take your SEO consultant's advice and commit to content production You’ll keep your SEO consultant, and Google, happy.
Negotiating Prices
Many people often seem surprised when they find out that most SEO consultants have hourly rates. Even if you’re an SEO consultant with competitive pricing, you’ve still probably been asked about your rates and whether or not they’re negotiable. The fact is that the costs of SEO should correlate to how competitive your niche is.
Asking your SEO consultant if prices are negotiable is typically not advised. Think of an SEO professional like any other sort of professional that you’d receive services from. You wouldn’t negotiate with your dentist, would you? Would you negotiate prices with your accountant?
Asking to negotiate prices is just plain bad taste, and it likely won’t get you anywhere. In fact, it might get you left without an SEO consultant. If you can’t afford to hire an SEO consultant, then see if you can do some SEO yourself. Just keep in mind that without a professional, you likely won’t get professional results.
Asking for Black Hat Practices
As Google continues to update its guidelines on search engine optimization and rankings, the entire industry of SEO changes. Things that were accepted practice a few years ago are no longer a viable option, and any good SEO professional understands that. The key to good SEO is producing good, quality content that people want to read and share. It’s no longer about getting as many links into an article as possible.
If you ask your SEO consultant to do anything unethical or unacceptable under Google’s standards, he or she will not be happy. These are referred to as “black hat” tactics in the industry, and they can get your company in trouble. If it’s discovered that you’re using black hat tactics, your rankings could seriously be penalized. This hurts both you and your SEO consultant, because your company will not be ranked and your SEO consultant will have a negative reputation.
Do yourself and your SEO consultant a favor, and stick to proven practices that work and that won’t get you in trouble.
Image credit: restaurantengine.com (google)
