When you employ an SEO to do some work on your behalf, you may get off on the wrong foot. After all, good SEOs will probably make some on site changes, pester you for content or approvals of content and generally be a bit of a pain to begin with. With that said, remember that SEOs are on your side and they’re trying to help. Like a personal trainer, you may not like what we do, but we’re trying to help. Please trust us!

By all means, feel free to research SEO and ask questions, as it’s far better working with an engaged client that keeps us on our toes.  However, there are three questions that are asked more often than most.  Asking these questions may lead to us tearing our hair out. Hang out on twitter, you’ll see many slaphead SEO’s.

These questions are a result of fear, uncertainty & doubt by large swathes of the internet. Here are 3 questions I get asked and why you shouldn’t ask them too.

Why Is My PageRank So Low?

PageRank is a little green bar on the Google Toolbar that a number of individuals put far too much weighting on. It’s an indication on how Google views how important your website is, but trust us, it doesn’t matter. The PageRank of a site is one of over 200 ranking factors, and it’s quite easy for a PR0 website with an SEO who knows what they’re doing to outrank a PR4 website maintained by an SEO who is clueless.

Furthermore, the toolbar PageRank is always invariably out of date, updating every time a Google Nodding Donkey™ says so. There was 9 months between the last 2 Google PageRank updates, 3 months between the two before that. Good SEOs are now tired of worshipping the green toolbar; it’s not their job to increase it almost meaningless value, but instead they should be focusing on bringing you a return on your investment. After all, that’s what you want, right?

It’s Been Three Weeks, Why Am I Not #1?

SEO is an investment over time, rather than Pay Per Click which is a quick (if expensive) way of getting traffic to your site. As a result you’re competing with every other site on the internet. Sites that have been around for longer and may have spent a lot of money on SEO.

When you are a new site, it takes time for Google to find you, let alone rank you. Unless you want to be #1 for “Large Green Elephants Fighting Singing Unicorns” (or other long phrases that no bugger will search for), getting to the top of Google for your chosen keywords takes time. More than 3 weeks.

Be patient, celebrate the small goals and analyse progress over time.

Why Are These Links you’ve Built Crap?

Usually when I begin an SEO campaign, I get some easy & quick links pointing to the site. Directory submissions, article submissions & bookmarks from social websites are easy to get, generally get stronger in time and you can define the anchor text. They’re not the most relevant, nor the strongest link you can get, but they are links.

Strong links require time to obtain, as the SEOs need to build relationships with bloggers, journalists & webmasters. Heck it’s taken me years to land  great links on some blogs, that’s just the nature of SEO because the long term payoff has been worth it. In the meantime, the weaker links will have to do. In many niches, these links are all you need to rank highly.

When To Ask These Questions To SEOs

If I was to employ an SEO to work on my site, I’d probably ask those questions & listen to the responses. If a prospective SEO can get you rankings within 3 weeks, give you links instantly from strong websites & guarantee an increase in PageRank, run a mile.

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“Keep your SEO sane by never asking these 3 questions” is a guest post by Rhys Wynne.

Rhys Wynne is a Manchester based SEO currently working with Manual Link Building.
In his spare time, he’s a serial blogger (at Winwar Media), and attends far flung football games – which he blogs about on You’re Supposed to Be at Home. He is @rhyswynne on twitter.

Big shout out to Super Carly for the proof reading. Seriously if you need a copywriter or anything proof reading, dangle a £20 note & doggy treats in front of her.