In today’s podcast episode, Rebecca tells a real-world story about mismatched expectations in buying and selling SEO services. She walks you through a situation she recently encountered, explains why she takes complete ownership for the issue, and then closes with some key takeaways for anyone buying or selling SEO services.
Takeaways for SEO Buyers
- Low-quality SEO consultants can hurt you. If you hire an SEO consultant, make sure the money and time spent are comparable to others in the industry. Just like anything else in life, you will get what you paid for. Really cheap SEO consultants will provide minimal results. And more important is the fact that they could hurt you long-term. If their tactics are not in adherence to best practices, they can degrade your rank and search traffic for years.
- Known exactly what your SEO consultant is going to do AND how they are going to do it. Do not let consultants work in secret. You should receive a solid plan of what needs to be done, how long it is going to take, and who is responsible for each task. If the SEO consultant doesn’t provide this in his proposal, run away and run fast.
- Self-help can hurt you. If you try and apply DIY SEO to your own website, you need to make sure you know what you are doing. I’m not saying not to work on your own SEO. I believe in website owners understanding SEO. What I’m saying is you have to educate yourself with quality SEO training. My 8-hour, online SEO course is an excellent place for you to start learning SEO and get yourself into a solid SEO process.
- Your budget needs to match your needs. High-quality SEO is not cheap. Know this going in. I charge $200 per hour so it is difficult for me to accept any retainers less than $1,000. I just can’t make enough progress with only two or so hours a month. If you’ve done a lot of poor DIY work or if you’ve hired a really bad SEO consultant, know you’ll have to budget to have this damage fixed. And make no mistake – it will need to be fixed before you can make progress.
- SEO takes time. You have to give yourself and your SEO consultant time to make progress. You won’t make quick progress with just a few hours per month spent on SEO. It will take months to make headway. If you apply much more time each month, you can make progress at a faster rate, but SEO still takes time. SEO is a journey and not a race. SEO takes 6 to 12 months to see real results. Plan for this with your budget and expectations.
Takeaways for Developers or Consultants Providing SEO Services
- You can’t help every person or company you encounter. As much as you want to be the solution to all their ailments, you have to make sure you only accept clients that fit your skill-set, your process, and your pricing.
- Don’t compromise on deliverables due to budget. If a project calls for 10 hours a month to be successful, then this is what needs to be within your proposal and accepted for work to commence. Don’t waver on this or you’ll run into a similar issue that I did.
- Know exactly what work was done by the prior consultant or website owner before you accept new clients. Your standard timetable for work can quickly fall apart if the prior SEO consultant didn’t have reputable policies and procedures. You’ll find yourself running down a rabbit hole trying to fix black hat SEO or poor quality work.
- Set timing expectations with your client before you engage. You’ll have much less confusion mid-project if you and the client have the same expectations for the time it will take to make progress with SEO.