Questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO Freelancer

By: Kevin Neilsen

2018-09-15 14 minute read

You will know when it is time to hire an SEO freelancer when your website isn’t showing up or being displayed in the top 10 search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo.

The SEO consultant specializes in helping business to increase traffic to your website by using keywords that meet search engine guidelines, they also research and analyse trends and improve search results by implementing strategies.

That’s not all...

By being able to spot the trends, they are able develop strategies that will give you a higher ranking in the Search engines, boosting the number of visits to your website. This will result in higher brand exposure and higher sales and profits.

By asking your SEO consultant a couple of ‘key’ questions at the interview will help you determine if they are up for the job.

• Ask them for references and a list of current and past clients. The list should contain contact details with telephone numbers.

How can you actually use this?

By asking the clients if they saw any improvement in their SEO rankings and conversions from the Consultants campaigns. Although the clients may not want to share with you specific details, this will be a good gauge in determining how effective the SEO consultant is.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this first question.

• Next, they should be willing to share with you their strategies and methods in detail how they intend to drive up your engine ranking on your website. Together with an estimate of how long it would take them to achieve their goals.

• Their proposal should include fixing any existing broken links and error pages and fix problems that lower your SEO ranking. Also improving internal linking structure, headings, tags and web page titles. They should also come up with SEO strategies for ‘off page’ that will give you brand awareness on social media platforms with press releases and blogs.

• Ask if they adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines. The guidelines prohibit SEO tricks, Bing and Yahoo also have guidelines that consultants need to follow. They include adding bogus hidden text, links and automatically generating spammy content.

• If your website is optimized for ‘local SEO’, people nearby searching for keywords that are relevant to your business, your website should appear. The consultant should be an expert in local SEO techniques and strategies which would include adding tags and Meta descriptions with your business’s city and state, listing them on Google, Bing and Yahoo’s local listings.

• A trick question, ask if they can make your website a number ranking on Bing, Yahoo and Google. (No one can guarantee such a claim and this should be a red flag).


hiring SEO freelancers

hiring SEO freelancers

• Ask if they will provide you with any changes they make to your site like adding new title tags or any modifications to the existing ones. Including any new content that will attract new potential customers with on page keywords, addition of any new pages or plans to redesign any navigation to the website.

• Will they be tracking exactly how much traffic is being direct to your website using Google Analytics? Set a schedule of when they will be sharing this information with you. The data will give you important information such as keywords searchers used to find your site, in addition to the number of links driving traffic to yours from other websites.

• Set a time and way of communication for status updates, using email, texting, Skype or via phone whichever is the most convenient for both of you.

• Agree to the payment terms, whether it is by retainer, project or hourly. According to a survey most contract projects, which are the most common, range from between $1,000 to $7,500. Hourly rates are between $76 to $200 and retainers range from between $252 to $500 per month on the lower end, with the higher end commanding $2,501 to $5,000 per month.

• Include in your contract that you will maintain ownership of all the work that the consultant provided.

That if you part ways they will not change, remove any content that they optimised.

Terms and schedule of remuneration

If the contract is terminated early will they charge you for early termination and to itemise them.

Included in the contract should be an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) where they are obliged by law not to disclose any/all of your company details to any other parties.

Bottom Line?

It is not an easy or quick process to find an SEO consultant, but by being prepared with a list of pertinent questions is the key to finding the SEO consultant, resulting in a perfect fit for your business.



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