what’s the issue with hiring freelancers for SEO?

[WebDevSoldier]

I say waste of time. It’s hard enough finding someone who genuinely can do real seo, even when paying top money, let alone someone who doesn’t speak English as their first language and is charging 5 bucks

[theeastcoastwest]

I usually offer the following guidance: figure out what it is you need to buy in terms of SEO and then evaluate the providers based on their ability to meet that goal.

The worst thing you can do with SEO, as well as a million other business related services, is start shelling out money for something that you don’t understand, at least on a basic level.

Maybe that means shelling out some extra money for an SEO to outline you a strategy and or explain some of the concepts that you need to know. Then you can take that information and start paying someone x dollars to do x things. That way you’re not hiring “SEO” as much as you’re just hiring a general purpose freelancer and giving them directions.

A lot of cheap SEO services make their bread and butter because people buy SEO services without understanding the nuances. For example, a lot of people know that backlinks can help their website rank but don’t have any idea why a backlink from mycoolblog.blogspot.com isn’t going to carry the same value as a link from an industry-related editorial feature.

IMO it doesn’t fall on walmart.com for selling shitty quality furniture. It falls on the people who buy the furniture if they don’t like the quality. Obviously, you need to do a little bit of research about what goes into quality furniture to not fall into that trap. The same goes for SEO IMO. Buyer beware.

[Mizoptimizer]

There is some small work in seo. Like, 1-10 post optimization, few keyword research, fixing tiny issues, something like that.

If your work is close to that size, then go talk to them. But for monthly/project SEO, don’t even think about them. Because we SEOs never work for per hour.

We work on project basis & there is no 5 bucks project.

[charli3k3lly]

You get what you pay for.

Would you take your car to a mechanic that charges you less than 25% of what other mechanics are willing to do the work for?

Would you trust a random person to work on your house that is charging less than 25% of what other contractors have been bidding on the job?

[jeanneaet]

I have made two attempts to use SEO freelancers. The first one never followed the scope of work, so I wasted time and money…so I say set a first goal for them to do and if they don’t end quickly. I tried hiring a more expensive SEO freelancer and asked many more questions and ended up coming to the conclusion that everythiing was too vague, so it was better to use a service and do it ourselves. I also found that anytime you are stuck, just google the question and there is usually an answer out there. Hope that helps.

[josourcing]

Wouldn’t paying for *specific tasks* be a better idea than paying by the hour????

[seofixes]

It’s the dunning kruger effect, but for SEO