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Inhouse is cheaper for you in the long run but Agency allows you to draw upon another company's expertise and will usually cost a lot more. Go online to some of the best SEO companies in your area and check out their career sections. You'll know how to write out the job description based on theirs. Salary information is relatively easy to find. You can ask around or check out that SEOmoz Salary guide for SEOs and SEMs.

Thanks! I have 3 shirts already -> 1 SEOmoz, 1 MozCon 2012, and 1 MozCation 2012

From what I know, it's just a continuation of the penguin updates. If you failed to adjust since the 1st update was released, then you'll end up worse. However, 3.0 only affects 0.3% and is mostly targeted at EMDs.

This might be helpful: http://searchengineland.com/an-automated-tool-to-eliminate-duplicate-content-issues-135233

Thanks for your offer Craig. We are trying to find someone local so that order to build our in house SEO team. There must be some of you in the North West that could be interested?

Yeah that is correct. You haven't changed any code on your website have you? meta robots tag or anything like that?

I prefer to stay away from ranks unless its a document that says we did "x" and as a result our ranks improved by "z positions" and "traffic grew by o%" and "sales or leads increased by n%." Think of it as a 1, 2, 3 or 4 process flow chart with the money on the end result. I include annotations on algorithmic updates, new/updated content uploads and outbound marketing activities. Basically anything that can create a social or normal link to your website. If the activity creates links then it should be annotated on the graph. This includes web development changes to your website. It's difficult to communicate results when one tries to show what their plan was or is. I stay away from things like that because the purpose of that graph is to communicate results. The line graph should be simple, visual and full of impact. See if you can get one or two high quality articles out the gate. If you can measure the process like I mentioned above then show the resulting positional movement on the SERP and conversions. See if you can add $dollar figures to your numbers. Try to educate the client and show that 'x articles' can result in 'y leads' or 'z dollars.' Then probably put together a document that says if we produce this many articles then this is how much we can get in sales. Make the business case. It's always a constant battle. Sometimes I like to do the reverse, especially when the client is so slow moving that I'm either losing faith in myself or getting downright frustrated. For these type of clients, I put together a business case that shows how much money they are losing and have lost since I've started working for them because they haven't moved fast enough. Simply calculate the number of articles that produce x amount in sales for a single month. Multiply it by 12 or how many months you've been employed by them or say something like - "You've been leaving xxxxxxx dollars on the table every year because of x, y and z." Try this tactic only if your numbers and calculations are solid and if your numbers are substantial and you will usually get a good reaction out of them. I hope this helps.

We've just started using Trust Pilot at www.refreshcartridges.co.uk. We've only been using it for two weeks or so but as I see if there are two potential issues with providing a link but not paying for the service: Unless your customers have used TrustPilot in the past it may look like you're writing reviews of your own website since they will be new users, will only have one review to their name and won't be verified buyers. I don't believe they will share the reviews of your site with Google unless you subscribe.  As such the only people seeing the review will be other Trustpilot users. Apart from that I suppose something is better than nothing, especially if it's free.

I'm not certain, but is Orderwise along the lines of what you're looking for?

Is the URL generating a 404 / included in robots.txt as an exclusion ? If yes, you might want to check with a HTTP header tool to verify the correct 404 is being displayed. Maybe post details here. If nothing works, send a message in the Google support forum and that should do it. Removal Requirements (https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=59819) To remove a page or image, you must do one of the following: Make sure the content is no longer live on the web. Requests for the page must return an HTTP 404 (not found) or 410 status code. Block the content using a robots.txt file. Block the content using a meta noindex tag.

This is the way we bill for our time: (1) Have a face to face or phone meeting with the potential client. You really need to have a long conversation about what the client’s wants / needs and what their expectation is. Without this, you’re most likely not going to achieve what the client's looking for and will cause major problems down the road. Go over how the company had been doing the past (x) years. Look into their Google analytics if they have it set up so you can get a sense of traffic / conversion rate. Talk to the client about their customers and find out what "drives" the customers to your clients business. This will help with getting some keywords down. Pro Tip: From my experience, 80% of the business owners are great at just that, overseeing their business but have a false idea of what SEO is and how it works. Make sure if they are telling you to rank for X keyword, you’re not just taking their word for it and instead actually researching what the client’s NEEDS to be targeting. Also talk in the terms of ROI and not "ranking", owners understand this alot better. (2) From that initial meeting, I will give the client a proposal that goes over (in broad range) what needs to be done along with a "recommended" monthly retainer that is broke up in hours. Once the client is on board with us, we will create a detailed timeline (we use Bacecamp for this) that shows what we are doing to the website onsite and offsite. Yes we do the actual work Example: If I recommend to a client that we spend 20 hours per month at $60 an hour than their monthly retainer would be $1200. I also let them know that if they want to see faster results, we can add more hours per month but this is the minimum recommendation for this particular client.

Hi Aran, We can help out with link-building, particularly if you're looking for a high-quality, content based approach. Have a look at the website and give me a call if you're interested - designbysoap.co.uk.

If Google tried to avoid aggregators & removed 2 domain results from serps, so what will be in the results then?

Hi, Yes totally agree, sadly this is one of very many links that this "professional" agency uses. Not my style but should out them really, it is annoying that they blatantly rule break and sadly still get results from doing so. Those of us who stick to the rules struggle! Arghhh so frustrating

Hey Kate, That's an interesting Question. I think you may struggle to find someone specifically trained in the requirements you state, as Video SEO and Video optimisation is a very specific skill that only some SEOs will have experience of, and few people working in the technical video space will have even heard of. That said, I'm sure you should be able to find someone for the role by just advertising for the core competencies required and then training a good candidate up in the specific video optimisation skills, which are fairly simple principles to learn. I would recommend taking a two-pronged approach to hiring - searching for people in the production space with some web experience and searching for people in the marketing/SEO/web space with video production experience. While your job description has mostly "SEO" type skills, to be a good video optimiser your candidate will also need an understanding of encoding, embedding production and dramaturgy. So..I suggest posting the job here: Mandy Production Hub Skill Set Film and TV Pro Requesting a technical editor with web experience - specifically analytics and HTML. Then also put the job on http://jobs.inbound.org/ and any other SEO jobs boards you can find, but ask for the core SEO experiences and some video production knowledge, rather than specific YouTube optimisation skills. Obviously YouTube experience is a bonus, but in my honest opinion, it shouldn't be a pre-requisite because of how easy it is to pick up the basics Once you've found someone with the core skills - both creative and technical ability, then essentially get them to go through this guide - http://www.distilled.net/training/video-marketing-guide/ and all related links in depth. However, It is a tough thing to find candidates for and I expect it is going to take you a while to locate the right person. It recently took me about 4 months to find and hire an editor & animator with HTML experience at Distilled and the challenge wasn't getting someone with the right skills, but finding someone who was talented and smart enough to be able to work things out for themselves, try new things and get to grips with the ever changing landscape of online video. Hope that's somewhat useful. Cheers, Phil.

Hey Tina, I actually wouldn't worry too much about this, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the site isn't actually linking to you from the video pages with an

Hi! I'm not sure I understand the last statement about your other website, could you explain more? Also, have you verified your site in the Webmaster Tools for Google and Bing and see if you have any notices there that might explain the rankings drop?