My check list when getting a freelancer
There are lots of colours at the top of this page for a good reason, it is to show there are lots of elements that come in all different colours. Its not just black and white!
What am I going on about?
There is
far more to search marketing than there used to be. SEO is not just about
throwing links up anywhere and waiting for the results to rush in. You have to
work hard at it and appreciate all the elements that come along with it. Like:
What does this cover?
Well a statement I always go back to is "I want a master of a trade and jack can stay at home..." A decent web developer will not claim to know everything about getting a website ranking. They may well know a few things but to be a true specialist you generally spend most of your time using that skill and keeping it up to date.
Ten typical things a freelancer in this area would have in their armoury;
Check me out over at The Engine Shed and please pop me a line to say hello!
- Design
- Development
- Conversion
- Analytics
- User experience
- Social Media
- strategy
What does this cover?
Well a statement I always go back to is "I want a master of a trade and jack can stay at home..." A decent web developer will not claim to know everything about getting a website ranking. They may well know a few things but to be a true specialist you generally spend most of your time using that skill and keeping it up to date.
Ten typical things a freelancer in this area would have in their armoury;
- Specialist SEO skills. They should know what factors (there are loads, this is a great infographic that shows 200 ranking factors) influence the rankings
- Test cases on the go to make sure they are tracking changes and testing for ways to improve websites
- An understanding of what makes good design, as this can influence the results
- An appreciation for conversion rate optimisation, so they know when to tell the client to possibly source an expert
- A good grasp of web development, the possibilities and time frames. This enables them to get a good idea of what they can get out of the website for rankings and also enable them to help plan for it
- They should be a good strategist. They need to look at things and put a strategy in place, not just start going for the most obvious keywords
- They must be able to use Google tools like webmasters and analytics
- They must be able to openly admit they do not know it all, as they can’t! The information isn’t publically available. What they know is what they have learnt from research and testing. They can apply their best practice but they cannot claim to know it all.
- A technical knowledge is always key. When doing website audits they need to check the back end code to make sure everything is as it should be. I am not saying they should be able to code but they should be able to read through html and understand what’s going on.
- Link building - this is a big one. There is the correct way and the incorrect way. It’s as simple as that. You either do link building to gain exposure on reputable websites or you do it to grab any link you can. If you use the first method you are onto sustainable results, if you do the latter you are heading for a disaster. Links should have a purpose and that purpose should not just be to move up the Google listings. The other side to this is they don’t actually have to do it; they just have to fully understand it.
Check me out over at The Engine Shed and please pop me a line to say hello!