Hire a Freelance SEO Expert

In most cases, yes. Your freelancer is likely to need access to your websites content management system and possible the files on your server. That’s why it’s very important to make sure you can trust your SEO freelancer. Look out for verification badges and customer reviews.

1. How will you improve our search engine rankings?

You don’t get any significant results without a serious SEO strategy.

You will never see consistent traffic increases if you randomly target certain words or use links.

What this means is that all good SEOs have a process, whether they freelance or work for an agency.

They might not be able to tell you: “We are going to get links from X, Y, and Z websites.”

What they can tell you, however, is something along the lines of: “We’ll start with an on-site technical SEO audit to identify any areas for quick wins. Next, we will identify the best words to target.

Ask about the links: Backlinks have been a big part of search engine algorithms for a long time and will continue to play a big role in the future. In order to improve rankings, your website will be linked to in some way.

As you might know, not all backlinks are created equal.

A good backlink is more valuable than many low-quality ones.

2. How will you let me know when there are changes to our website?

You will receive reports from a good seo freelancer on a regular basus. The most common is once per month, but some will send you weekly updates.

Access to your website is the first thing you will have to give a freelancer. This is one of the main reasons to hire a company that you can trust.

All website changes made by an in-house developer can mitigate any risks. Changes will be made slower and you’ll have to make sure there is constant communication between your developer and your company.

Some consultants do not want to change the website. If this happens, it could be ared flag. While off-site work is a large part of SEO, on-site work is often more important, especially at the start.

Changes need to be tracked: You need to make sure that your chosen SEO freelancer is diligent about any website changes they make.

If something goes wrong, you need to know exactly what caused it. If an SEO company says that they track changes internally, that’s not good enough. Imagine if you were stuck with a broken or damaged site because your agency suddenly became non-responsive. In order for you or an emergency consultant to fix the problem, you need to know what caused your SEO to drop in the first place. You should be sent a detailed log of any website changes the freelancer makes. You also need to make sure that your company is on top of any website changes. You have to know what happened if something goes wrong.It isn’t good enough if the company says it tracks changes internally.If you’re going to fix the problem, you need to know what caused your website to go down in the first place.

3. Is it possible to give information on some of your past clients?

Shopping for an SEO freelancer or company is the same as shopping for everything else. You should be able to see reviews, testimonials, case studies and who their previous clients were.

You shouldn’t expect a freelancer to hand over their entire address book, but most will be happy to give examples of 3-4 big name clients. Ideally, they should be able to show their results over a long time period.

If they can’t give you any examples of legitimate clients, that’s a big red flag. Perhaps they weren’t able to deliver for big clients in the past, or they don’t have the experience for that level of internet marketing

Then, follow up by asking who their longest active client is: one of the biggest problems with shady SEO firms is that they use short-term risky tactics.

They don’t care if they jeopardize the site in the future or show quick results.

If you’re interviewing an SEO that has been around for a while and their longest active client has been with them for under a year, that’s a red flag.

4. Are you following search engine webmaster guidelines?

You need a consultant who adheres to Google’s publicly published guidelines – webmaster best practices

These rules specifically ban 12 common SEO tricks, Automatically generating spammy content, and adding bogus hidden texts Links Your website will not be approved if a candidate does not follow these guidelines. Could be demoted to an infuriatingly low ranking in search results. Or, worse Google may ban it altogether from search results.

5. Is it possible to guarantee that my website will rank at the top of Google, Bing, and Yahoo?

It is a red flag when a candidate claims to be able to guarantee a specific rank or is an insider with Google, or any other search engine that can give you priority search rankings. Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the only ones who can determine your rankings

6. What SEO tools will you use?

While many people are under the impression that any SEOs that use tools are “blackhat” SEOs, that’s not the whole story.

When talking about SEO, the term “tool” often refers to a variety of applications.

Tools make it easy to process a lot of information quickly.  This is a great way to save time and money. 

There are many tools available:

• Reporting tools
  Reports could also be created It’s much easier to create custom reports that combine data manually. Analytics, keyword rankings and other SEO metrics. The majority of the report can easily be automated. Plus, you will know exactly what to expect from your client.

• Tools for Link Building
  These allow you create thousands or hundreds of links by clicking a button and using a few proxy servers (more details below).
• Tools for technical SEO
  Such tools include Screaming Frog which allow SEOs to quickly crawl large sites for technical problems. It would be difficult to do manually and it is often impossible. Find important problems that must be addressed.
• Tools for research
  Tools such asBuzzStream This allows you to collect contact information for a large number people in just minutes. These tools can be used to gather leads and conduct keyword research.

The majority of these tools are excellent. These tools help you to comply with Google’s guidelines regarding SEO. But, they are not a pure link building tools (which can be very bad!)

These tools allow you to comment on thousands or hundreds of different topics. Blogs, forums, and web 2.0 websites (think Weebly, Blogger, etc.) These are the lowest quality links that you can create, and can easily lead to penalties.

Stay away from SEO companies that mention tools like Xrumer or SE Nuke.

One more tool I want to mention is Scrapebox. Scrapebox is It can be used to spam blog comments but also for legitimate purposes.

It is helpful to develop a list of contractors you would like to interview as you browse available consultants. There are some criteria you can use to screen profiles.

Industry fit. They can help you figure out how best to reach your target market if they know your industry.

Project experience. Candidate profiles should be screened for skills and experience.

Feedback. If you want to know what it’s like to work with an expert, look for reviews from past clients.