Hiring the right person for the right job has never been easy, and more so when it’s raining proposals after you advertise your SEO project or send your request for proposals to SEO companies.

Eliminate the service providers that are obviously not a good fit for your project. Here are the seven steps to doing so:

1. Arrange the proposals you received with the highest-fee proposal listed at the top.
2. Delete the highest-fee proposal with the contempt it deserves. SEO campaigns do not have to cost a small fortune.

❖ Pro Tip: While eliminating the highest quote, keep in mind, though, that it’s not the fee, but the value that matters. It’s possible that the highest quote is less expensive than the lowest because of the value it delivers.

3. Trash the lowest-fee proposal right this moment. WHY? Because, SEO is NOT a cost. It’s an investment in your business and you do not want to invest in junk.
4. Ignore the bottom 25% of the proposals competing on fee to snatch your SEO campaign, only to disappoint soon.
5. Avoid one-man armies.

❖ Running a successful SEO campaign requires serious team efforts from specialized talent such as SEO analysts, content writers, outreach specialists, analytics professionals, conversion optimizers, etc. Single-person armies or freelancers working part-time on their cozy couch or dining room table can’t simply do it all, no matter how well-intentioned they are.

6. Maintain a safe distance from SEO newbies, as they tend to learn at the expense of their clients’ marketing budget.

❖ I was a newbie too when I started, but I learnt the SEO ropes on my own site first by rankings my paper industry marketplace successfully online. I didn’t waste my clients’ precious marketing budget on experimenting for my own SEO education.

7. Run away from SEO con-artists promising the moon, tonight.

❖ SEO efforts take time to fructify and those promising faster-than-the-speed-of-thought results are probably desperate for business. Staying away from desperate individuals when dating and desperate service providers when contracting is generally considered a good practice.

In the next blogpost, we will discuss how to hire the right SEO company for your SEO campaign after you have eliminated the candidates using the above process.