SearchDex for SEO consultation? Price feedback?

[rickpeyton]

I know the JCPenny story from 2011 and read their CEO response to that. I've been pleased with my conversations with them so far and was given a reference that checked out well.

Now us. We are a small business and our expertise is in print manufacturing and fulfillment. A portion of our business is running a network of retail websites related to the print business and that network generates six figure revenue, but we rely entirely on our affiliates to promote and drive traffic.

I've been learning SEO for about 9 months - primarily just so that I can be informed while managing our direct to consumer initiative. But we don't have the internal expertise to pull off a campaign that is not heavily outsourced so that is why I'm open to talking with SearchDex.

Does anyone have any feelings about them one way or another? Does anyone have a recommendation for me to talk to that might be an even better fit for what we want to do?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Rick,

Unfortunately I don't have much experience with SearchDex, and I certainly don't want to comment on a company I don't know much about (other than the JCPenny thing)

But I will tell you how I might evaluate a company.

• I'll look at their social media profiles. Do they follow industry leaders on Twitter?
• Do they contribute to the SEO community (blogging, conferences, participation in forums like this)
• Do they have a decent blog?
• Who are there clients? Most, but not all, firms have a public list of clients you can check out. How do they rank?
• Do they guarantee rankings? This is usually a bad sign.

Our friend Rhea Drysdale recently wrote about this on her company blog

How to Choose an SEO Company:

Excerpt...

• Request case studies and contacts from like industries/site size to ensure they can handle your work
• Testimonials (if these aren’t published, ask for them, it may simply be that the SEO company has NDAs that protect their clients — like Outspoken Media does!)
• Talk to their current clients
• Along the same lines, if they display client logos, call them
• Google them and check out their online reputation
• Look at how the site is written and identify warnings (e.g. big guarantees or language that sounds too good to be true)
• Check the site’s own rankings, community engagement, backlink count and domain authority, etc.
• Check industry visibility
• Ask for their methods
• Question their ethics for grey areas to see if they align with your needs
• Question their tool set (Does it sound outdated? If it’s proprietary, do they keep the data if you leave? Can they report on what you need?)

If you're generating a few hundred thousand a year in revenue, this is something worth investing in. I'd advise talking to at least 2-3 different vendors and getting proposals from all of them.

Finally, you may be familiar with the SEOmoz Recommended List, but it's always a good place to start.