Finding professional help

How to go about finding reliable consultancy advice

[edneil]

I have been reading the forums and getting stuck in for quite some time now but am realising that the more I learn the more nervous I become that I am doing things wrongly and could upset the search engines or am missing obvious ideas.
My sites are busy and popular with lots of good content and links in.
Obviously it is not acceptable to use this forum for business purposes but how do you go about trying to find help from someone who is going to advise properly?

[paladin]

Hi edneil,
As you stated, the key is to finding someone (or company) who will give you sound advise. As I stated in a post earlier to day ( [webmasterworld.com...] ) the field of SEO can sometimes get a bad reputation due to service providers who try to trick the search engines instead of optimizing the sites.

For a lasting long term solution it's best to have a large active site with new pages and updates all the time (which it sounds like you have). The rest is just a lot of hard work and patience using all of the available HTML tags and links. These and another few things depending on the structure of your site.

Try to get a few quotes from some people / companies and ask for specifics on what will they do.

If you see that they will be using any of the following then I suggest that you stay far away from them:

Are they going to make numerous doorway/gateway/entry pages?
Are they going to be using redirects?
Will there be hidden texts on the pages?
Will they submit your site to 1000's of search engines and directories (including FFA & Guestbook pages)?

If you want more information feel free to leave me a message here or using the Sticky Mail option.

Good Luck

[DaveAtIFG]

The SEO Consultants Directory [seoconsultants.com] is pretty thorough about screening SEOs and not listing those using less desirable techniques.

[jeremy goodrich]

You might also look into the WebmasterWorld Commercial Exchange Forum [webmasterworld.com] which gets no shortage of professionals reading it, I'm sure. :)

[bcc1234]

Just wait a few days and keep checking your sticky mail :)
Some pros will contact you...