Learn How To Do Business On The Internet Is your company looking for Affordable Small Business SEO Services? Maybe you have a medium to larger company seeking a SEO Firm that can offer Affordable SEO. Let our online self study search engine optimization course put an end to that search. Our self study course offers Affordable SEO specializing in adaptive Internet Marketing that works for your business. The objective is to increase your web traffic by helping you obtain a top position on search engines. Act Now! Profit From This New Internet Marketing Opportunity Our affordable small business self study SEO Services will generate results that can help your business succeed. This online course will help you achieve a site ranking that will acquire high exposure for products and services by utilizing the latest and most affordable ethical methods. Your company deserves an affordable SEO and comprehensive web marketing program for your small, medium or large business. How can you tell that our services are more than worth the investment? Look to the left of this page and view the free lessons and form your own opinion. Frequently Asked Questions

Before you go and and decide to do your SEO in-house, lets look at questions related to outsourcing your SEO campaigns. Being able to weigh the pros and cons of both paths will ensure you are seeing the bigger picture and understand the potential consequences before moving forward in either one direction or the other.

33. Do I hire a firm or a consultant? 34. Do I hire a SEM consultant? 35. Can a consultant do everything I need or do I have to do it myself? 36. Will a consultant have all the skills necessary to complete the job? 37. Will the consultant sub work out to other consultants? 38. Will I be forced to pay additional fees sub-contractors? 39. Will a consultant spend enough quality time on my account? 40. Will I be able to get a hold of a consultant when I need them during business hours? Now we'll look at the questions pertaining to hiring a multi-person SEO/M firm to manage your campaign. By asking and answering these questions you'll better understand the differences between a consultant and a firm and give you the ammunition you need to decide which, if any, is the better route for you to take. The primary concern you must have when hiring either a firm or a consultant is that they'll spend adequate time on your account to ensure your success. SEO is not good if the people you hire are too busy working on more important clients! 41. Do I Hire an SEM Firm? 42. Will a firm have qualified people working on my account? 43. Will a firm have too many clients to give me quality time? 44. Does the size of the firm matter to me? 45. Is the firm a "ranking factory" or will they be sure to pay attention to my needs? 46. How responsive will my search marketing firm be with my concerns? 47. Will my calls and emails get answered? Now we move into the realm of pricing and asking questions related to costs versus return on investment. When outsourcing your SEO to a firm or consultant it becomes a bit more difficult to control costs than it does when you hire-in house. But that's not to suggest that cost cannot be controlled and you cannot get a return on investment. It's all a matter of knowing how to manage the campaign, expectations and the budget that goes along with it. Costs and return on investment are two of the most critical aspects before engaging in any SEO campaign. But when it comes down to it, cost should not really be a factor. If the SEO campaign proves to be successful in giving you your return on initial investment and a healthy profit beyond that, cost becomes irrelevant. If you knew every dollar you spent would reap $2 in profit, then your profit would be limited to how much you were willing to invest. Unfortunately, the math never breaks down that easy and we often don't have the initial $1 to spend indefinitely until we can start getting our $2 in returns. Discussing the costs and expectations with your SEO firm will help you plan for the future both financially and in terms of how to handle the business that will be coming your way. 48. How much should search marketing cost? 49. What should be included in my campaign? 50. What should not be included in my campaign? 51. What will my payment plan? 52. Will I get the return on my investment? 53. How soon should I expect to see results? 54. What kind of results should I expect? These final questions will be centered on control and expected involvement of the business owner. The site owner, to some degree, will likely have to give up some control of their site if they want the SEO firm to implement anything themselves. At the same time, there is a reasonable expectation that the SEO cannot have 100% control over the site in order to ensure the client approves of the specific changes that the SEO is asking to be made. Somewhere in here is a balancing act from the business owner having to do everything themselves and handing over all decisions to the SEO completely. 55. Will I have to give up too much control of my site? 56. Am I willing to give out sensitive site access information? 57. Will I implement recommendations as they are provided? 58. Can I veto recommendations and still expect results? 59. Will I be expected to do anything? 60. How much will I have to be involved? 61. How much will I be allowed to be involved?

33. Do I hire a firm or a consultant?

This is no small matter. Thinking through the process of whether you are able to manage the SEO for your site is an important one. While you can always "try", in some cases, failing at SEO can be worse than not having done it at all. So before you decide that you can do it yourself, answer these questions:

When outsourcing your campaign this is the first big question you need to answer. Consultants and firms can act and re-act very differently, giving you more or less attention depending on the circumstances.

34. Do I hire a SEM consultant?

SEO/M consultants are, by and large, a one-man or -woman operation. Typically it's one person doing the job of many, or outsourcing tasks as needs arise. You typically only have to deal with one point of contact, so there is no getting lost in a maze of "who's in charge" but there is rarely every a "higher-authority" to appeal to if the contact isn't sufficiently meeting your needs.

35. Can a consultant do everything I need or do I have to do it myself?

More often than not, consulting means that you'll have to do most of the work yourself. The consultant is just there to, well, consult. They'll perform the necessary research in order to provide you a list of things that you need to do. You're paying them for the information they can provide you but the implementation of many of their findings will be entirely on you.

36. Will a consultant have all the skills necessary to complete the job?

As consultants are typically one-man operations this because a valid question. While there are many components to SEO that any one-person can become very accomplished at, there are some aspects that require more specialized education or expertise. One person can only do so much and be able to do it well.

37. Will the consultant sub work out to other consultants?

You need to know in advance what will happen if the SEM consultant you hired isn't particularly skilled at some areas that will be important to your success. Not all SEM consultants are experts in copywriting, PPC or link building. If you need work in one of these areas they will do one of three tings: 1) provide you with the recommendation to find an expert to manage it for you (yet another consultant to hire,) 2) they'll do the work themselves at a sub-par level, 3) they'll sub-the work out to people they trust.

38. Will I be forced to pay additional fees sub-contractors?

If additional sub-contractors get involved at the behest of the original contractor you hired you'll want to know who's paying their fees. Before you sign any contract find out if those fees are included in the original contracting quote or if their fees for service are an additional expense for you. This isn't something you want to be surprised by later.

39. Will a consultant spend enough quality time on my account?

Every person has their limitations. A single person can only spend so many hours a day on a single account. Most consultants manage more than one account at a time, which means they have to juggle all the work that needs to be done between them. This isn't necessarily a problem, provided the consultant knows their cap on how much work they can take on. However if they like the prospect of signing the next contract then this can lead to too much work and too little time. When that happens something has to give and you'll want to make sure it isn't you.

40. Will I be able to get a hold of a consultant when I need them during business hours?

Your SEO consultant should be available during business hours, but most people consult because it gives them freedoms they would not have in an office. That means that during business hours they may be homeschooling their kids, driving their kids to practice, out skiing, or sleeping because they do most of their work during the midnight hours. While most communications can be accomplished via email, it's nice to know that you can get in touch with the consultant when you need them. Make sure the consultant's hours of availability matches your communication comfort level.

41. Do I Hire an SEM Firm?

The primary difference between hiring an SEO firm vs. hiring a consultant is the number of people that are available and working on your campaign. Consultants are generally one-person operations while an SEO firm may have anywhere from two to twenty to two-hundred people working for them, with anywhere from one to a dozen people working on your account. What that means to you can be assessed by answering the questions below.

42. Will a firm have qualified people working on my account?

The hiring process of each SEO firm can differ radically. Some firms will only hire "names" who they can verify know their stuff. Other firms prefer to hire people they have to train because they come with a significantly reduced paycheck. Others may hire someone with some experience but neither has the price tag of having an industry recognized name, nor do they have to train them to do the job. Yet still, any firm may have a combination of all of the above. While there is nothing wrong to having newbies working on your account, it is important that you know that there will be ongoing oversight by someone who knows what they are doing.

43. Will a firm have too many clients to give me quality time?

Regardless of the size of the firm or the number of people on the team, there is problem issue that can prevent any firm from being effective: Taking on too much work. Any firm you considering hiring needs to know where their boundaries are in terms of how many clients they can take on at a time. If they know their limits then they must be willing to turn work away if they think it will interfere with their current accounts. If they want to continue to take on more work they they should also have a pool of new talent readily available as needed.

44. Does the size of the firm matter to me?

The size of the firm shouldn't matter so much as the ability of the firm to do it's job and to do it well. But there is an issue of how personalized the service will be and how well you will be able to interact with the "machinery" that often clogs the wheels of communication. The larger the business the more difficult it often becomes to reach your project manager. On the other hand, smaller firms can have similar problems simply because of the lack of resources and time for the fewer people in charge.

45. Is the firm a "ranking factory" or will they be sure to pay attention to my needs?

Very large firms tend to hire a lot of lower skilled individuals and give them largely repetitive tasks. Because the skill and experience level of these employees is so low its often the case that your account doesn't get much personalized attention. While it's easy to automate the basics with low-level employees, someone needs to be able to analyze your account to assess problem areas and then to assign them to someone who is knowledgeable enough in how to fix them.

46. How responsive will my search marketing firm be with my concerns?

When you have concerns regarding your account you need to know who you can address them with. Larger firms often provide you with an account manager that is it be available to help with any concerns and to answer all your questions. However if too many people are in your account working on auto-pilot the project manager's knowledge of your account may be limited. This isn't always the case, but definitely can be a concern. Smaller firms, however can often lack the resources as mentioned above, to be able to address the very same concerns.

47. Will my calls and emails get answered?

While any firm can hire a receptionist to take calls, the level of service you get can be a primary concern. Call and emails both can often go unreturned for days. Any SEO firm you hire should have a policy of getting back to you within 24 hours or less. You have to be confident that your needs will be addressed in a timely manner.

48. How much should search marketing cost?

While this is every bit a legitimate question, it is also like asking "How much should a car cost?" The answer varies a great deal and there are many factors involved in coming to any conclusions. A few things that will be a factor in pricing is the quality of the firm or contractor you're hiring, their years of (combined) experience, difficulty in the project, expected results, and of course the actual services that will be performed.

49. What should be included in my campaign?

Ultimately it comes down to whatever you agree to. Any firm analyzing your account should have a general idea of what will be needed over the course of the next several months. However in many cases the initial assessment will only represent a piece of the overall campaign needs. While a good site audit can pinpoint the most obvious needs, many won't be able to be uncovered until the SEO is actually in the site and working through problems. New issues present themselves as other issues are fixed, new determinations are made based on site performance, and there is generally an ongoing analysis to help uncover other areas of weakness that can be patched. Often times these "unexpected" issues are considered the norm and for the most part will be covered by the optimization contract. There are instances, however, when issues arise that go above and beyond the scope of the contract.

50. What should not be included in my campaign?

SEO campaigns are not all created equal. What works (or is necessary) for on site won't always work (or be necessary) for another. While there are some universals that must be included in most SEO campaigns, there are many elements that will need to be determined based on the type of site, its history, and particular areas of need. When assessing a contract for services feel free to ask questions about the intended strategy as well as necessity of any given area of focus.

51. What will my payment plan?

There are a lot of different payment plan options and you'll simply have to find the firm that provides what you want with the payment plan you are happy with. Some variations are to pay based on performance, pay based on actual hours invested, or to pay based on a flat monthly, quarterly, or semi-annual fee. Any of these payment structures may or may not include an up-front set-up fee with a commitment period of a certain length of time.

52. Will I get the return on my investment?

This is the ultimate goal of every marketing campaign, whether it be online or off-line. The sad truth is, not every marketing campaign is successful every time. With SEO the return on investment often doesn't come for several months, and sometimes as long as a year or more. Competition largely plays a role in this as the more competitive the industry the more SEOs tend to charge. And with greater competition the time frame to "success" is often much longer as well. You should never enter into an SEO agreement without an expectation of success in terms of getting your return on investment, but neither should you have unreasonable expectations in how soon that return will be realized.

53. How soon should I expect to see results?

Quickness of results varies by site, industry and investment. If the SEO is working with a brand new site then results will often take longer than an established site that can benefit greatly from just a few tweaks. The amount of your investment can also play a big role in how quickly you can see results. If you're investment is minimal and you're up against sites investing five to ten times as much as you in their online marketing campaigns, then you've got a long (if not impossible) road ahead of you. Even if you match your competitor's investment coming from behind is very difficult. Knowing the competitive landscape around you, the work being done both for you and your competitors, and how much investment is being made can help provide you with a decent predictor of how much time it will be until your SEO campaign becomes a success.

54. What kind of results should I expect?

This is somethign that should be discussed with your SEO before signing your contract. While its near impossible to make predictions on what will happen, you can get an overall sense of what you can expect and when. Most importantly, however, is knowing what kind of results you should look for. Are you looking at rankings, traffic, sales or ROI? If you expect "success" in rankings then you may tend to ignore the increase in sales because rankings are not where you think they should be. The area of expected results should be discussed ahead of time so the SEO knows exactly what you're looking for.

55. Will I have to give up too much control of my site?

Unless you want to do everything yourself then you will have to give up at least some control over your site. When it comes to on-page SEO, most SEOs want or need at least some access to make changes. If you are unwilling to give them basic access to the site then you need to be prepared to make all of their recommended changes yourself. How much control you give up will be entirely up to you and most SEOs will work with you either way. Some don't want access and only want to provide recommendations. It also means less work the SEO has to do. On the other hand, the less the SEO does the more you will have to do.

56. Am I willing to give out sensitive site access information?

Part of giving up control means giving the SEO some sensitive data such as FTP info, CMS logins, etc. And with every bit of access you give them that becomes one more person potentially responsible when something goes wrong. No person is completely error free so the SEO should maintain backups of any changes so if anything does go wrong it can quickly be fixed. But the only way to eliminate risk 100% is to keep all but the most essential people out of the site. You'll just have to decide how essential the SEO is.

57. Will I implement recommendations as they are provided?

Even giving the SEO full access to your site there will always be recommended changes that fall beyond the scope of their service contract. As those recommendations are presented to you, you then have the option of implementing them immediately, ignoring them completely, or putting them off to the side to revisit another day. Keep in mind that SEOs feel justified in every recommendation they provide and so long as there are any outstanding recommendations they will use that as a justification to explain why the campaign may not be performing as expected.

58. Can I veto recommendations and still expect results?

Not all recommendations made by the SEO are going to be urgent or important to the success of the campaign. Some recommendations are "mission critical" while others may have various degrees of importance. Your SEO should distinguish between those which are urgent and those that are not. Even urgent recommendations should be carefully considered. SEOs can often focus on getting rankings over getting conversions. Any recommendation may improve rankings but could at the same time be detrimental to your site's usability. Ideally the SEO will tag each recommendation appropriately so you know what you need to focus on first and foremost.

59. Will I be expected to do anything?

The short answer is yes. It's a rare circumstance that you want to turn over 100% of the decisions to the SEO. Things such as keyword selection, text changes, title tags and anything that changes the look and usability of the site should be subject to review. Short of that you run the risk of having the SEO implement strategies that are not quite what you have in mind.

60. How much will I have to be involved?

This depends. Some firms will do nothing more than provide recommendations and leave you to implement them. Others will require client feedback before moving forward to the next phase. You'll want to know what the expectations are for your involvement in the various stages of campaign so you can budget your time appropriately.

61. How much will I be allowed to be involved?

As noted above, some SEOs will not move forward on a particular issue until they get the client's input. This means that your involvement is mandatory, not just recommended. You don't want to be in a position where your inability to invest time with the SEO is holding the SEO process back.

The amount of access the SEO needs and time you'll be required to invest in a particular campaign can dramatically change the dynamic of the campaign as well as the SEO's ability to ensure the campaign's success. Having this information before you begin can help you plan and prepare for the logistics of campaign implementation.

Any marketing campaign you begin needs to start with a list of questions. After all, you can't know which way to go unless you question the direction and consequences of each option that lies before you. Only after you have considered as many of the questions as possible can you truly make a wise and informed decision over what to do and what you can expect in return.

By Stoney deGeyter

Part One - Questions 1 -32