Give me credit for this: at least I don’t pretend to be an expert when I’m not. My company has full-time SEO experts. I’m not one of them. That doesn’t mean that what I’ve said here, that this is very important, isn’t true. It does mean than I can’t give you good practices (although from what I hear, good practices change constantly, as the searchers try to weed out the searcher-strategy gamers).

You’re right on one thing, I probably should add at least one tip on how to avoid the dirtball consultants: check references. Call other clients. And really follow up and make those calls, explore the references well, ask enough questions to weed out fake testimonials. And ask them to give you the name of a client who dropped out, and to tell you why. Then call that client and talk to them.

Tim