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Brandon Wishnow, iSearch Media
It can be a little difficult to tell one Bay Area SEO firm apart from another. Since the Bay Area really is the geographic capital of the Internet, there are more SEO firms in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the East Bay, and the rest of the Bay Area than anywhere else in the world. So how do you pick a good SEO firm when there are so many to choose from?
Before you get any search engine optimization project underway, the first thing you need to do is define your goals. What do you hope an SEO firm will achieve for you? Make sure your hopes for the project are realistic. Some website owners believe that if they hire the right SEO firm, it'll be only a matter of a few weeks before they're ranking number 1 on Google. Understand this: such a thing simply isn't possible via ethical techniques (and even if ethics don't concern you too greatly, black-hat SEO tactics will get you caught and blacklisted sooner or later, so any way you look at it, engaging in unethical SEO practices is a terrible idea). If you contact an SEO firm and they claim to be able to deliver such results so quickly, you know you know you're dealing with someone who's either unethical or clueless - either way, someone to steer clear of.
Optimizing for natural results in the major search engines takes time to pay off. Understand this going in. Hiring a good bay area SEO firm is an investment, one you have to wait for a while to fully harvest. We tell our SEO clients to expect to wait anywhere from two months all the way up to nine months, before they start to see real results. If an SEO firm in the Bay Area or anywhere else promises to deliver noticeable results in a time frame much different than that, you should be suspicious of them. Especially if they tell you they can guarantee you results right away.
Of course, you need to define your budget as well. How much can you afford to spend on the services of an SEO firm? If you're running or planning to run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns in addition to SEO, remember to factor into your budget the money you'll have to pay every time your campaigns generate a click, because SEO firms never cover that cost.
Bay Area SEO firms range greatly in terms of pricing. If you're in charge of the online marketing for a big company and you have a six-figure budget to spend on online advertising, you'll probably want at least to consider hiring one of the full-service SEO firms who offer a full, robust suite of services and technology. A good way to find the major players is through, intuitively enough, searching on Google. Search using queries like 'Bay Area SEO firm' and check out the first few organic results that appear. A good thing to keep in mind is that if an SEO firm can't get their own site ranked well for at least some of their important keywords, it's a good bet that they won't be able to achieve a great deal for you, either.
Also keep in mind that a big Bay Area SEO firm is going to quote you usually at least $45,000 up front for the initial setup, and will also require you to sign a yearlong contract, where you're paying at least $1,000, usually much more, per month for them to manage and maintain your account. If you have this kind of budget, some of these big SEO firms might be right for you. Call several of them. Ask questions. The strategy they usually take in these initial phone calls is to hit you with a barrage of questions of their own; often they don't give you the chance to get a word in edgewise. When researching an SEO firm, always come to the initial inquiry calls with a strategy and agenda of your own. Ask about their experience, their rates, any hidden fees they may charge (if they charge hidden fees, be wary of them); find out if they've had experience in your industry, what kind of success they've had with similar clients, and what they expect to be able to deliver you personally.
If your budget is smaller, you might want to try Craigslist.com. Especially in the Bay Area, there are many independent consultants and smaller Bay Area SEO firms advertising their services in the small biz ads and computer services sections of the San Francisco Craigslist classifieds. Browse around. Read the listings. Any good SEO firm or consultant will talk right there in the ad about his or her experience and credentials. This experience should be impressive (they're selling themselves, after all). If they don't talk about why they're capable of providing what they're offering, that means they're probably not any good at it. Another thing to look for is prices; be suspicious of any Craigslist poster who gives a dollar amount or a per-hour rate that seems too low. This is a skilled service, and anyone who actually knows what they're doing also knows that their expertise is worth a lot more than $25 or $50 per hour. A Bay Area SEO firm or individual selling themselves that short is either inexperienced (and therefore will be ineffective), or has bad business sense, which should be of concern to you, since what you're paying them for is, essentially, business advice.
Finally, talk to people. More and more businesses, especially in the Bay Area, are hiring a Bay Area SEO firm or an agency elsewhere to help drive traffic to their websites. Chances are, you already know someone who has hired an SEO firm, and it's a safe bet that they'll have an opinion one way or the other about the quality and value that firm provided them.
There are dozens of firms and individuals offering SEO consulting in San Francisco and the surrounding areas; if you look in the right places and ask the right questions, you'll be able to find the Bay Area SEO firm that's right for you.
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