Would appreciate thoughts on who has worked for you, how to best pick an SEO contractor or any SEO people out there: We have money, a good little niche, if you would take on another client.
Thanks!
As far as promises (or guarantees rather) and SEO goes, I don't make them. A search engine is basically a "black box" as far as I see - making a guarantee would seem a bit disingenuous. The only promise I can make is that I would do my best using whatever knowledge I have.
I have class for few hours in a bit but I'll try to give you a proposal either today or tomorrow.
EDIT: Found your gmail address by following one of the sites listed in your profile. Thanks -- I'll email you later.
Save your money, hire someone junior but clever, give them 6 months to work on it part time--tell them not to try anything blackhat/fishy. I think you'd get way better bang for your buck. (They can start by adding METATAGS to the first (most important?) category (Egyptian Hookah) in your menu--Google says that keywords/description aren't that important anymore but every SEO consultant is going to tell you to do them first)...
You are sitting on a goldmine having a copy writer. Most longterm SEO is developing legitimately interesting content to encourage high-quality, inbound links. Have your copy writer colleague spend an hour or two a week writing Hookah Articles (I'll read them--always been a bit intriqued by them) and in a year your site will be killing it....
Since the discussion in this thread is turning toward whether SEO should be a "buy or build" decision, I'll throw my two-cents in there, as well.
If your website is a hobby or just a side-project, I think SEO is something you can pick up by reading some of the better guides out there (SEOMoz's "Basics" guide comes to mind). This will ensure that your site doesn't have things like <title>Home</title> or inaccessible navigation.
However, all of "what there is to learn yourself" is what our firm would take care of on day 1. The real SEO (the kind that commands 6-figure salaries or 5-figure monthly retainers) is much, much more in depth than the average internet user realizes. The reason you can't learn those strategies in a day is because most successful SEO practitioners keep them private, for obvious ($$) reasons.
Satisfied customer here. Not cheap but worth every penny.
Here is my companies site http://www.digitalbaltoro.com/ (site is a work in progress)
We are a small shop but we have great experience. Here is the link to my Linkedin profile to give you the overview http://www.linkedin.com/in/gforst as you will see lots of experience in e-commerce.
Give me a buzz if you are interested in chatting some more. 312-566-8944 ext 102
It's like a StackOverflow, but for SEO and SEM.
However, I'm curious about your "not rocket science" comment. I've always generally agreed with you, but I've been watching a lot of twist lately and Calacanis keeps saying stuff about SEO guys making crazy salaries ($100k - $200k/yr). If it's really that simple, how are some guys pulling that much $?
I think at a minimum I'd only consider hiring someone with actual development skills.
That probably was the first lesson, but I still spent another two decades before it fully sank in.
There are many things that, even though not rocket science, are quite specialist in nature and it takes time and experience to get to the level where you can do just as good a job as a specialist.
So - yeah, delegate, but some things you can't delegate. No idea about their business in particular, but for a lot of online businesses, keeping track of the basics is probably something you ought to have a feel for yourself.
It's similar to the idea that tech startups are most likely better off not outsourcing their development work.
accounting services and accounting service are different, with substantial gaps in search volume and competitiveness. Do you know which one is worth more? Do you know how much more?
There's an order of magnitude difference between the traffic on nj accounting firms and new jersey account firms. Are you sure you know which is better?
Even if you cultivate a list of hundreds keywords that are relevant, valuable and that you can be competitive in, do you know how to decide which words to try to hit via SEO and which to do via SEM? Do you have a tool that can help you make that decision quickly?
Do you know who your competitors are, what keywords they're winning on, and how strong they are on each, so you can plan an effective attack, leaving them only with the crap you don't want?
Sure, it's pretty easy to say use valid html, use alt tags, use meaningful URLs, have a header, use relevant images, make videos, get links from relevant content with good anchor text, and all the other crap that goes into SEO 101. But when you get into market analysis, competitive analysis, management of link-building campaigns, etc, it gets very involved. I'd expect that it would take smart person a year of working full-time under an expert to be good at it.... and I'd expect it to take them much longer if they're doing a part-time self-guided tour.
Any chance you could contact me instead? I'm paras {at} wingify {dot} com
Register an account for free here and you can check out what I offer. We can discuss things privately if you need a strategy put together.