I’m going to point you to a web page made for business owners who know enough about SEO / SEM to know they need it, but not enough to make informed decisions about who to hire.

But first, I want to add my own tip. It is 2007 and for the last couple of years this industry has been growing like crazy, both in terms of new SEO / SEM firms, and businesses who are in the market for their services. I have met a lot of terrible, ok, great, and fantastic SEOs in the last two years, and there seems to be a common theme: Anyone who is “ok” doesn’t have to cold call or email for work. They have enough to make a good living and grow their business as long as they keep clients happy. Anyone in the “great” and “fantastic” category doesn’t have to look for work either. In-fact, these are the people who are likely to turn you away and refer you to someone else because they are so busy it would be physically (or temporally) impossible to take on another client unless they gave up some of their terrible habits - like eating and sleeping.

So if someone sends you an email or calls you out of the blue telling you how much you need their SEO/SEM services, they must be a “terrible” SEO.

I am not trying to say it’s “cool” to turn down work. If you have time to do it, by all means chase after the client, sell yourself, get the work. But never just randomly cold call people - especially other SEOs!

Now on to that webpage I was talking about: How to Spot a Phony Search Marketing Company in Three Minutes or Less