How to Pick an SEO Professional - Not Every Professional is a Professional
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The first thing we find is that a lot of "professionals" won't make our cut if these requirements are followed rigorously, and there are exceptions to every rule. To look at how SEO professionals become "professional," I would dare to say most of them start their careers as something else on the Internet. The major starting point is "webmaster" or "Internet marketer." A webmaster is a web developer who is involved in the day to day running, administration and marketing (note the M word) of a particular website. An Internet marketer is someone who wants to sell products online. Both by the nature of their fields seek to gain high search engine rankings, and then proceed to develop (or hire) a skill set which will get them these rankings.
SEO becomes more important if the webmaster runs an ecommerce site. Others may have entered the SEO field as business development managers who were told to get "traffic on the site" or "generate leads." And recently, young programmers who build web applications have also found their way into SEO. Note that there is hardly anyone who was an "SEO" from the get go (apart from full time Internet marketers). As a profession it is a service, and most of the professionals are called professionals not because they generate results but because a circle of "insiders" endorse them (more on this later).
SEO calls for team work; one man can do a lot, but only so much. Ideally SEO involves a copy writer and a developer working together (with a marketer/manager type person acting as an overseer) because they can get the job done faster than any single one of them. As with web development, everybody has specialties. This kind of service may turn out to be expensive for small web sites (since it's mostly relatively large SEO companies that work like this). If you get just one person to do your SEO, I will be surprised if the person is working alone (especially if you have a very big site).
Considerations
Ideally your SEO professional should have a few top ranking sites under his or her belt, all ranking for varying difficulties of key words (ranking for "computer monitors" is different from ranking for "Black Samsung CRT Monitors"). They should also NOT use tactics that could get you banned (or should have the good sense not to be caught). Ideally you should get a referral from someone else you know.
Individual SEO professionals should have ranked well on the search engines (so ask for screen shots of previous rankings); s/he should also be reasonably articulate, with good writing skills. I see SEO from a copy writing perspective so good writing skills are a must. Now note that most (not all) SEO professionals and companies charge a fixed monthly fee with no guarantee of success. And if you give your money to the wrong person, you are most likely to lose all your money without getting any results. Forget about fancy degrees or qualifications; pick an individual or company with a proven track record, someone who can deliver on demand.
Consider legal issues in picking your SEO specialist. There are SEO professionals all over the world, but if you want your money back and the fellow stays in Bangladesh, you might have a spot of bother collecting. Again I cannot repeat this enough; for a single individual get referrals, you can ask the professional to supply them.
Or you can ask other professionals in the industry to refer you. A good place to find referrals for individual SEO specialists is the forum right here at SEO Chat. Just post at the SEO Professionals forum (read the guidelines if you are a newbie), ask for contact details in the messages sent to you, and also feel free to ask the moderators.
SEO professionals can be very picky (there is a lot of work). If it looks like your site is a "dog" so to speak, or that you will be difficult to work with, some will not work with you regardless of how much you are willing to pay.
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