{"id":162,"date":"2009-10-10T21:36:42","date_gmt":"2009-10-11T03:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bryanhadaway.com\/?p=162"},"modified":"2025-05-22T15:32:05","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T22:32:05","slug":"be-careful-when-hiring-an-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/be-careful-when-hiring-an-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Be Careful When Hiring an SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First thing before hiring an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer): <strong>do your research<\/strong>. Here comes what I consider to be the golden rule, are you ready?&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If they offer you guarantees: <strong>DO NOT HIRE THEM!<\/strong> \u2014 There are no guarantees in SEO. Learn this now. <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/fundamentals\/do-i-need-seo\"><em>See what Google themselves have to say about the subject<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not to say that they shouldn&#8217;t work out a plan with you and talk about goals, predictions, and expectations, but if their bottom line is something along the lines of:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<em>For $5,000, we guarantee you page one on Google.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>RUN!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In my experience, I would say that the majority of SEOs out there may do more harm than good for you and your website.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons Why?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They&#8217;re scamming you; taking the money and running.<\/li>\n<li>They don&#8217;t really know what they&#8217;re doing, but claim to be experts.<\/li>\n<li>They&#8217;re black-hat SEOs \u2014 meaning they do shady things that might give you short term results, but ultimately are against <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/docs\/essentials\">Google&#8217;s Webmaster Guidelines<\/a> and can get you penalized.<\/li>\n<li>They might somewhat know what they&#8217;re doing, but over-charge for what they offer by building it up to sound more technical than it really is. In other words, make sure they aren&#8217;t charging you $1,000 for something you could probably do yourself.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure they can write quality code as well. A well-coded, validly-coded website is important for good onsite SEO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you&#8217;re on a budget I recommend taking a minute to learn about SEO yourself, not just hiring someone. Google&#8217;s even released their own <a href=\"http:\/\/static.googleusercontent.com\/media\/www.google.com\/en\/us\/webmasters\/docs\/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf\">SEO PDF guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>What I Do When Providing SEO<\/h3>\n<p>When I begin consulting for an SEO project, first thing&#8217;s first: I review the website, top to bottom, on the front-end and back-end (meta and code). I see what needs to be fixed and added immediately. I create a list explaining each point in laymen terms and provide a quote for said work. That&#8217;s phase one.<\/p>\n<p>Phase two is marketing. Now that the website itself is SEO-friendly, what can we do organically to drive quality traffic? That usually involves content-building and creating a social media presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First thing before hiring an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer): do your research. Here comes what I consider to be the golden rule, are you ready?&#8230; If they offer you guarantees: DO NOT HIRE THEM! \u2014 There are no guarantees in SEO. Learn this now. See what Google themselves have to say about the subject. That&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/be-careful-when-hiring-an-seo\/\" class=\"more-link\">&#8230;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Be Careful When Hiring an SEO<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,10,19,4],"tags":[230,208,211,220,205],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-ethics","category-marketing","category-saving-money","category-seo","tag-business-ethics","tag-google","tag-marketing","tag-saving-money","tag-seo"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webguy.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}