Have you ever considered hiring an SEO expert in Ireland or anywhere else in the world, just to end up with this kind of strange feeling, like doubt, uncertainty… where you kind of don’t know what to look for and what questions to ask…
After all, sometimes it feels like everyone and their goldfish are marketers, gurus and experts these days, right? Anyone can shout from the rooftops: “I’m the best SEO expert in Ireland” or post on social media ridiculous claims like “give me 5 days and 200 euros and I’ll rank you for the most competitive terms”
Let’s together try to figure it out.
So, here I’d like to give you a few tips, hints, ideas on what to pay attention to and what questions to ask your SEO specialist before you engage him or her. Some of these will probably be very controversial… not going to apologize here – this is how I see things… take it or leave it.
Also, if you are a local business in Ireland or any other English-speaking country I will show you how you can get your SEO expert to start generating your sales leads for free or with as little financial risk for you as possible.
But before I continue, let me address the elephant in the room… yes, I am a biased SEO expert and some of the stuff I talk about here will most probably be too controversial for some to swallow… and if you hate me for that, feel free to leave an angry comment below.
So, if after this disclaimer you are still here, let’s move on…
First…
Obviously, just like in any other industry, successful case studies, client testimonials, current client rankings is a great thing to look at. But here you have to be a bit careful since I know for a fact that some of the so-called SEO experts don’t really do the work themselves but simply outsource it all to some 3rd world country, and take the credit for it.
Also, you’d be well-served to check what competition they are competing against.
I’m sure you understand it is a completely different ball game to compete against Peter the Plumber in a town of 10,000 people versus International companies with billions of euros to spend and rank for “US tax accountant” Internationally.
Let me shamelessly plug it in here… ask me, and I’ll be happy to show you how I and my team have destroyed billion-dollar goliaths with SEO agencies way larger than us… and trust me, my clients were super-sceptical and thought these are impossible to outrun.
But back to the evaluation of competition… I’ll be first to admit, without a background in SEO it is not that easy to estimate how competitive the keywords you are presented with actually are.
But on a very fundamental level, short-tail keywords like “accountant” are typically harder to rank than long-tail or regional keywords, like “accountant in Dublin” or “Accountant in Ireland”.
There’s way more to the difficulty ladder than just “company formation” versus “company formation in Ireland” or “company formation in Dublin” but at the very least it gives you a little bit of a perspective on keyword difficulty. Got questions? Just ask, and I’ll try to get back to you.
Next…
Ask my wife or my friends and they will all say that I’m a nice, friendly guy… but when I’m after rankings and you are in my way, I will destroy you without thinking twice. No friends here. Only victory matters.
Search engine optimization experts’ mindset has to be very different from let’s say social media marketer’s mindset because it’s a zero sums game… nothing is vague and unclear here. You’re either ranking at the top… or someone else is. You’re either champion or you are lost in cyberspace picking up scraps.
I like to draw parallels with MMA… you know how after some UFC fights, fighters reveal their true heart with something like “hey, I like and respect this guy… but it’s either his family or mine… so I do whatever it takes to protect my family and put the bread on their table… there’s only one champion”, right?
Yes, it may sound cruel or unpleasant but SEO is a dog eats dog world. It’s no place for timid Timmy who cries in the shower when a big bully takes away his rankings. Period
How can you find out if the SEO expert in front of you got the balls for this? I guess you’ll have to trust your gut feeling here… or look for the signs of confidence.
Next…
I remember how in 2008 I could rank for tons of keywords within a day… yes, today you pay me money, tomorrow you’re ranking number one… these days are gone, and they are not coming back. The SEO game is becoming more difficult, more competitive, with more moving parts that your SEO specialist has to pay attention to.
There’s no denying that Google has got smart engineers that focus on making it harder for the Search Engine Optimization experts to game the system.
Both you and your SEO expert have to have patience and the ability to stay on the course but not rush things. The SEO world is full of fools who wanted to rank faster, got overzealous, used some super-duper link-building software, triggered Google’s slap and disappeared from cyberspace to page 97.
Look, when you work with tons of sites as I do, there will be times when one of them will rank within a month a completely new domain. But it is an exception, not a rule.
Typically, I tell my clients, if you don’t have the patience to stick to the SEO plan and keep pushing for 3-6 months, probably better not to even start.
Do they rely too much on Google’s guidelines and repeat “I’m a white hat SEO expert” in every second sentence?
I’m probably going to attract a heat for what I’m going to say next and piss off a bunch of SEO guru’s but this obsession with being “super white hat” and believing that Google will tell you what you need to do to rank is ridiculous.
Let me paint a picture for you.
Google is an overprotective daddy. Keyword rankings are Google’s teenage daughters. SEO experts are shameless, sneaky teenagers who want to sleep with these daughters.
Look… I’ve got a daughter. And if one of her boyfriends will come to me and ask for the advice to get laid, he’s probably going to regret it. At the very least, I’m not going to pull out a neatly written “Guide to getting Uldis’ daughter in bed”. Would you?
My point is, SEO experts job is to get rankings… and no matter how you look at it, we are trying to manipulate Google to our advantage.
Any SEO expert worth his or her paycheck will mention that backlinks are among strong ranking signals. How to obtain them? If you ask Google, just write ridiculously good content and wait for other sites to naturally link back to your content. Good luck with that, I say… if you’re trying to play a completely “white hat” game, you can’t even really promote that content because it will be against Google’s guidelines. After all, you can’t ask anyone to link to your content, can you…?
My point is simple, the goal is to get rankings and not get slapped somewhere along the line by overprotective “father Google”… sure, following Google’s best practices is a great idea and all SEO experts should try to oblige, but trying to keep your hat too clean is like trying to win a professional bodybuilding contest without ever using steroids and performance enhancers… common, am I the only one who thinks “naturals” in professional bodybuilding competitions are like unicorns. We like them but yet most of us have serious doubts about their existence.
Next…
Just recently I was estimating the effort it will take me to outrank current winners in one of Ireland’s local business niches. It took me 15 minutes to figure out where they buy their links from… and, yes, link buying is a totally “black hat” method and… yes, if I can easily find it out, so can Google… now, previously I mentioned that I’m not obsessed with all that “white hat” jazz, but buying links from places that have ‘buy links here’ signs plastered all over their website is a very high-risk approach, and it is very likely that sooner or later they will get slapped by Google and lose their rankings.
Besides, even if Google doesn’t slap them, what stops me from building exactly the same link profile plus a few more and simply outranking them? Nothing! Do you see my point?
What’s the alternative you may ask?
Building and maintaining your own assets!
I won’t go into details here since there’s a lot of ground to cover, and I don’t publicly teach it.
Why? Well, it’s my competitive advantage, and I don’t want to lose it to the competition.
Also, it is expensive and time-consuming, and you can’t do that once you’ve landed a client.
However, if you are the right kind of person and you want to get a glimpse into my proprietary SEO assets, you’ll have to sign an NDA, and I’ll show you how and why I can rank without getting slapped by Google and without risking to be easily outrun by my competitors. Ok?
And, one more thing…
How much risk is your SEO expert willing to take on his own?
In every business transaction, someone is taking a greater risk. When you are hiring an SEO expert or SEO agency, you will most likely have to fork out significant money upfront and hope that they deliver rankings and leads for you.
Nothing wrong with that.
And, while most of the time it is a common and fair business practice, some of us are willing to take on more risks than others.
Here’s a ballsy proposal:
If you are a local business in Ireland or anywhere else in the English-speaking world, I’d like to look at your current situation, and it is very much possible that I can offer you a completely new website and rankings with very little or even no upfront investment on your side.
And, no, while I’d like to believe that I’m a generous person, this offer has nothing to do with that. What I’m talking about here is a performance-based deal.
If you don’t want to pay for hours or tasks, but you’d rather pay for actual sales leads, we’ve got something to talk about. I promise you, you’re going to like it.
I and my team will take care of everything… yes EVERYTHING, and once the leads start pouring in, that’s when we will charge you based on our performance.
To summarize… work is free… leads are not!
Why am I doing this?
Glad you asked.
First, while I’m not new to SEO, I am new to Ireland
I want to establish myself as an SEO expert in Dublin and SEO expert in Ireland and I’m willing to put risks on my shoulders in order to build up more case studies and testimonials in this specific region.
Second, I’m not too excited about the traditional way SEO specialists work with businesses… if you expect that your SEO specialist will explain everything they do, it becomes time-consuming for both sides. These things are complex. Someone has to pay for all the discussions and back-and-forth communication.
On the contrary, when I do the SEO work on my own, and all the communication is directed internally to my team, and don’t have to report every single task we’ve done, it is more cost-effective for me and allows me to move forward faster.
So, you may ask: sounds cool… is this option available for everyone?
Absolutely not! The fact is, we can only take on a few of these types of clients from time to time, as our resources are limited. Building and ranking sites can be expensive and time-consuming, and these kinds of deals come out of my own pocket.
With that being said, please feel free to contact me and I’ll have a look at your market, your competition, your customer value and get to know you as a person… only after that, we can decide whether it is something that we both feel good about moving forward.
What I can sincerely promise is that I won’t engage in hardball sales tactics… we’ll discuss, look at your market, opportunities to collaborate and see where we go from there.
If you have stayed with me up to this, you’re a legend! And you’ve got my utmost respect. Thank you for taking the time.
You can contact me here.
