Free SEO evaluation, worth it? aka How to Find Budget SEO help?

[killeraces]

My website is crying for SEO help. I have two questions:

1. Are there any risks associated with free SEO evaluations offered by SEO websites? I did a google search for "free seo evaluation" and plan to trying out a couple of them. I won't get dragged into any type of link farm will I?

2. What type of budget should I set aside for SEO help? We have a small (less than 100 pages) but content-rich site. We probably cannot hire someone full time, but maybe just need some good advice or a one-time consultation. How much should I expect to pay for that? Where can I find the right folks?

[Christian SEO]

There should not be any "risk" in having someone look at your site and telling you all the things they think are wrong with it.

Well, are you looking for someone to do the work, or just provide some consulting?

SEO projects will realistically range from about $500 to many, many thousands of dollars, depending on your site, what you want/need, and how expensive the company is.

Some SEOs are more willing than others to just provide consulting. If you know a DIV tag from an e-commerce site you can probably follow the instructions someone provides to do the work yourself.

While some SEOs will tell you that submitting is not needed, we think that is short-sighted and recommend you have your site submitted to as many places as possible that are not real junk sites, like link farms and FFA sites.

There are some places like seopros.org and topseos.com that will take your information and send it to SEOs and have them bid on what you need. Just be prepared to go through a lot of emails to find serious bids from qualified companies.

[killeraces]

Thanks for the great advice Christian (both here and in pm).

We are looking for people to give us a one-time consultation. I think we can follow directions like "don't put scripts here" or "rename that directory" or "change the h1" tags. We are probably not ready for advance stuff like "use script to cloak outgoing links" or "consider rel=no follow in your links."

[ken_b]

Before you submit your site for an evaluation by an SEO firm or site I'd suggest you read a few threads here. Comparing your site to the advice given here can probably at least prepare you for a better understanding of what an SEO tells you, and might very well make such an evaluation unneeded.

I'd suggest starting with these threads:

Pageoneresults Building the Perfect Page Threads

Building the Perfect Page: Part I [webmasterworld.com]

Building the Perfect Page: Part II [webmasterworld.com]

Building the Perfect Page: Part III [webmasterworld.com]

Tedster's Information Architecture Threads

Information Architecture for the Small Site: Part I [webmasterworld.com]

Information Architecture for the Small Site: Part II [webmasterworld.com]

And of course Brett Tabke's

Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone
26 steps to 15k a day. [webmasterworld.com]

Together these threads give a pretty good basis for success.

[Robert Charlton]

SEO is a time-consuming process. The downside of the free SEO evaluations I've seen is that no one spends much time doing them. They're cookie-cutter reports that try to impress you with useless detail and really aren't going to tell you anything that will be of much help. They won't really tell you what's wrong with your site. They will try to get you to spend your money to find that out. Why else would they be free?

Invevitably, they're going to tell you that you don't rank in the top thirty for your meta keywords on twenty different search engines. They'll then offer you services that range from anything like "doing keywords and submitting" to a six-month maintenance plan with optimized titles and weekly monitoring. They may suggest a "guarantee," of getting several top-10 rankings for some four or five-word phrases that have no competition and are never-searched.

I think it's best to spend your money up front and get an honest evaluation from a good SEO. A good evaluation takes time and skill to do... and it analyses your site's targeting, structure, navigation, content, competition, inbound links, etc etc etc etc. If you're relying on free evaluations, it may be that you're in an area that's too competive for your budget.

While some SEOs will tell you that submitting is not needed...

The "Search Engine Submission" forum has been deprecated on WebmasterWorld, and there's good reason why.

[killeraces]

Thanks for the honest evaluation.

What would a one time consultation with a good SEO engineer consultation cost?

I always thought the best way to find SEO engineers is to just do a search on google. Afterall, if they are good at SEO, their site should rise to the top. Now that I've read more information provided here in this forum, I'm beginning to see there is a whole universe of knowledge I need to obtain before even thinking of getting help. =)

[edited by: trillianjedi at 10:23 am (utc) on April 17, 2005]
[edit reason] Let's keep away from the specifics where possible.... thanks. [/edit]

[2by4]

"I always thought the best way to find SEO engineers is to just do a search on google. Afterall, if they are good at SEO, their site should rise to the top."

I'd second everything Robert Charlton said, and add this:

I saw one guy ranking for some seo keyword, when I checked his links in yahoo, he had over 1 million links to his site. In other words, he controlls a huge number of link farms, spam networks etc.

Don't look at how they rank, look at how a client ranks for difficult to achieve keywords, in competitive money catetories. Anyone can make their own site rank high, that's easy, ranking someone elses site is another story.

Many good seos however will not reveal their best clients, for what should be obvious reasons.

Look at a sample page, see what techniques they use, watch especially out for keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaking, etc, those are very popular among sleazier seos, and they do work, temporarily. Before the site gets banned that is.

Getting ranked in highly competitive categories is not something to put out for bid for, it's ongoing work, it's difficult, and it's expensive. Make sure to distinguish between the ability to deliver short term success and the ability to create consistent high rankings. The two are very different.

Most seos are very sleazy, sort of like lawyers, so the trick is to find the competent ones, but a random choice will probably end up with you getting burned, unfortunately.

Personally, I'd recommend reading a lot of WebmasterWorld search engine threads, especially google, then start noticing which posters make the most sense, consistently, and get in touch with them.