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How to Evaluate an SEO Consultant? JM Internet Group Review / Performance Report
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How do you evaluate an SEO consultant? We get asked that all that time. We also get asked about why someone should take our training classes in SEO. Here is a review and performance report on the JM Internet Group, updated on: January 2, 2012
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By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group.
Posted: January 2, 2012
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Contents:
SEO Performance: How to Evaluate
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about getting to the top of Google and Bing's free listings. We teach using free SEO tools, so we get a two-for-one benefit: free listings on Google or Bing, using free tools. It doesn't get any better than that!
SEO is not magic. It is very much a science, and it is certainly measurable. Here are some of the items you can measure to see if your company (or your SEO consultant) is performing up to par -
- Your rank on Google searches for your priority keywords targets. Are you on page one (the top ten)? If so, you are in the game. If not, not. Even better - try to get in the top three free / organic listings - that's where the real money is.
- Your web traffic from Google. Set up what is called a non-branded filter, and look at organic (free) traffic over time. Is it increasing?
- Goals. You should define goals such as registrations or purchases on your website, and you should see improvement in the quantity of goals over time.
Rank on Google Searches (SERP Rank)
The JM Internet Group targets the following keyword / key phrase patterns. First, 'SEO Training,' 'SEO Course,'SEO Class' as well as Social Media (Training, Class, Course). Second, we find that many of our students look first for courses in their local city (e.g., Boston, or Chicago), and so we optimize for city phrases such as 'SEO Course Boston,' or 'Social Media Class NYC'). Finally, we find people come to our website with specific queries in mind such as 'How do you optimize Adobe Flash for SEO?' or 'What does competition mean in AdWords.' And so we optimize our SEO Tips and blog for those sorts of got-a-question searches.
Here are some of our sample ranks - as of January, 2012 -
Web Traffic Over Time
Rank on Google is great, but what's even better is valuable incoming traffic to your website. So we track not only our rank, but our 'non-branded inbound organic traffic.' This is an 'Advanced Segment' in Google Analytics that identifies traffic to our website that did NOT include our name (JM Internet Group), as those types of searches are basically people who already knew us. We also don't want advertising or email-based traffic - just pure, free, fun SEO traffic. Here is a chart of our inbound organic traffic since inception in summer, 2009.
Click to view, full screen!
Finally, we also track goals - these are how many people register for our free webinars, etc. These were 399 for the last month tracked by this post: December, 2011. In conclusion, if you are evaluating your SEO consultant or looking to evaluate our courses, the visibility of our own site on Google searches for SEO, AdWords, and Social Media Marketing - training, class, course - plus the increase in inbound search traffic, plus the achieved goals - these speak volumes of what you can learn from the JM Internet Group, and what we can do for your company as your private SEO consultants!
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