SEO advice: you get what you pay for

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SEO is one of those very interesting fields where you’ll see a wide disparity between rates charged by individuals and companies offering services. It’s not hard to think of some of the reasons this may be true. The field is new and unregulated. There is no tradition of service associations or other trade groups that help professionalize the craft. There are no labor unions for the employees. I could continue, but I’m sure you get the point. SEO is a new and thriving practice which attracts people from all walks of life due to it’s open nature.

With this type of environment, the amount of advice on SEO is rife, and some of it is downright dangerous for the most part. Many people who are looking to rank websites quickly may be mislead by quick-buck artists who don’t have their best interests in mind. Much of the information is copied from other sources and stated as authority. In short, much of the iseo advice you hear on the internet is out-of-date or intentional misleading.

The reason that SEO secrets aren’t available in public is because the level of competition would ensure that your advantage would disappear on the first such revelation of a “trick” that you knew “worked”. Also, it could be argued that there are no secrets at all in SEO, but rather there’s hard work performed by knowledgable professionals over a long period of time. To potential clients, this news might not be something they want to hear. But they should hear it because even short term success in search engines right now requires great planning and even better execution.

My advice to someone seeking SEO advice: hire a professional. There are a large number of firms on the internet now who handle SEO extremely well. They are well suited to handle the complex changes that occur almost daily with the rankings, and they can help you brand as well as position yourself for longer term success. If you’re tempted to do it yourself, you need to be critical: what do you bring to the table? Do you have the time required to do the job right?

Here’s a rule of thumb: If you have more time than money, then do SEO yourself. If you have more money then time, hire a pro. And whatever you decide to do, verify and analyze all results yourself. You need to have a strong profit motive to even begin an SEO job, and you need strict testing guidelines to even determine if it’s working right. Sometimes it will cost a lot more to hire a firm that can do all of these things for you, but in the long run, it will be well worth it.

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