You might not want to launch a full out optimization campaign but want to implement only a few techniques. Perhaps you are a single person agency with no desire to expand and just want to boost your personal sales by a small to medium percentage.

Hiring a consultant does not mean you have to spend thousands of dollars on a complete campaign. You can hire one to handle just that aspect of SEO that you are interested in. For example, perhaps you only want help with keyword planning.

Perhaps you’re tech savvy and know all about how to write in HTML code and insert meta description tags but may be woefully short on marketing strategy ideas. A consultant can help you design a customized strategy that you can institute yourself.

If you are planning to use an outside SEO consultant, before you start to look some up, determine exactly what it is that you want them to accomplish for you.

You will also need to consider if you want to use an online agency or a local consultant. Online agencies can work well because in the world of telecommuting, you can meet with them via video conferencing, or talk to them on the phone or through one of the many instant messaging systems that are in place.

If you’re the type of person that likes to meet with someone in person to sit down and discuss your needs, then you should choose a local consultant in your area if there is one available.

When choosing an SEO consultant it’s important to ascertain what their area of expertise is. They may specialize in keyword marketing or paid placements.

They may be expert writers who can easily handle ghost writing fresh articles and blogs to use as content on your site, or they might specialize in web copy and design newsletters that will capture the attention of every viewer with their compelling titles and intriguing content.

This might be well and good for general businesses but real estate is a marketing specialty. No matter what other area of expertise they may get high marks in, one of the most important ones for them to have is knowledge of the real estate industry. Any consultant that you hire should know and understand the following:

• Fiduciary relationships
• How appraisals are derived
• How mortgages are obtained
• How stressful the process of buying and selling real estate is so they will know how to appeal to your viewers
• They should understand real estate market trends and know whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market and why
• Understand and be able to discuss the difference between a buyers agent and a sellers agent
• Without this knowledge the will be unable to choose the correct keywords or plan a strategy that will be as effective as one who is a real estate industry expert.

Now it’s your turn to get to sit on the other side of the search engine table and do some comparison shopping on your own. Naturally since these are SEO consultants, you can be sure that they have their own optimized websites or at least they should.

Thanks to the knowledge that you gained from this book, you can take an inside look at how optimized their own site is. Making sure they didn’t employ any tricks to get to the top of the search engine ladder.

Still, even after you have studied the pages and feel secure in their optimization techniques, you will need to get references from them and actually take the time to check them out.

You can also visit the sites of trade organizations that list legitimate SEO consultants. One such organization is Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.

If you already know someone who has used an SEO firm and have gotten great success with their site because of them, then you can get the name of that firm and find out if they meet your specialized criteria.

Once you’ve narrowed down your selection to three to five firms, ask each of them to submit a written proposal listing what they will accomplish for you, how they will achieve that goal and how much their fee is.

It’s no different than shopping for a home. Buying a house is probably the biggest investment a person makes and choosing a consultant to help with your search engine optimization is just as huge an investment for you. Your website, therefore a large percentage of your business and income is riding on your selection.

In order for some consultants to make an accurate assessment of what services they can provide you with and the fee for doing so, they may need to take a detailed look at your existing site to see the extent of the changes that need to be made. Once they have audited your site, they should be able to present you with an itemized list of the services that your site will require to optimize it and include a fee schedule for each service.

If you will be hiring this firm for a one time optimization that you will then maintain yourself, then the costs should be lower than a firm that will be responsible for regular SEO maintenance of the site.

The last thing you want to do is hire an unethical SEO consultant. A legitimate consultant will sit down, listen to your needs and ideas and let you know which of your goals are achievable and which ones are not.

A disreputable SEO consultant will make grand claims, promising you that they will get you top rankings no matter what your needs are. You know by now that with the variables involved in search engine rankings, no one can make this guarantee. If they do, then they are probably going to use tactics that may get your site banned from the search engines.

A huge red flag is if they promise top rankings in all of the search engines and don’t need to make any changes to your site, you know enough about SEO to know that this would be impossible using legitimate SEO techniques. Throw that company’s name on the scrap heap and quickly move on.