Who doesn’t dream of a website which loads in less than 2 seconds, appear on first page of search results and have millions of visitors. People spend lots of money and human resources on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), marketing and online paid advertisement to get the web traffic.

While most non tech people understand the concept of web, users and traffic, they fail to understand why their newly created website is not getting enough traction? Why even after months of launch the website is struggling to garner decent user base.

It is then they hear about SEO, the medicine to end their traffic woes. Unaware of the SEO and its implications, most end up getting poor professional help and guidance. SEO is a crowded space and you need to be pretty sure that you are engaging qualified SEO professionals or agencies.

While you will get white hat and black hat SEO professionals, you should always go for white hat SEO to reap long term benefits. SEO is a free traffic and if done well, it can beat any other paid marketing.

You should keep following things in mind while hiring a SEO professional or agency because hiring a wrong one can make you pay for years given the strict algorithmic changes being done frequently to Google Search Engine:

• First understand your SEO requirements. Though both on-page and off-page SEO is equally important, you should always go for fixing on-page SEO first.
• Always check credentials of SEO professional or agency like years of experience, websites handled and the team.
• Discuss deliverables, strategy and approximate timeline. It should start with SEO audit or on-site technical SEO audit.
• If someone suggests fruitful SEO results in days, don’t hire. SEO takes months to yield good results.
• Do discuss link back strategy. If the agency or individual professional promises hundreds of link backs from quality websites for dirt cheap price, think twice. Quality links don’t come cheap.
• Remember, good and experienced SEO professional or agency would never guarantee first page SERP ranking. They will surely try to get there.
• Do discuss weekly and monthly reporting to make sure that you are abreast of changes done to your website.
• Do discuss content strategy for on-page and off-page SEO improvements.
• Discuss payment terms; fixed or pay per hour.

SEO is not one day job, so don’t expect overnight results. It’s an ongoing thing and needs careful planning, strategy and execution. Keep things mentioned above to hire a SEO expert that can take your website to next level.