Price Range: Top Notch Keyword Research

[Boodreaux]

How many years would someone need to have to be experienced enough to provide a thorough job of providing me with keyword research?  I am willing to pay for the best job but I don't want to be taken to the cleaners...especially by someone that may not be giving me the best effort or that is not qualified. ( I was just quoted $200 an hour from an 18 yr old today)

We are getting ready to change our URL's and add keywords but I am not sure which terms to add and in what order.  I have heard  put the most important words first but I am not sure which are the most important. By my research we only have about 5 keywords but I am not sure. (Excluding long tail)

[Boodreaux]

Thanks Nakul.....I will give those tools a test run.

[Boodreaux]

Yep......thanks EGOL........I also feel it should be a collaborative endeavor.  Our team will be able to give them some good insight in our niche and then hopefully their keyword research expertise can bring home the best results.

[Boodreaux]

Thanks Phil....I will use this advice! I had one offer for exactly the scenario you mentioned.

[EGOL]

I agree with Phil.... the number of years means nothing.

You want somebody SMART.... and who knows the language of the business.  This is especially true if you are in a technical niche such as specialty chemistry or physics where search volumes are near zero and tools are near useless - but transactions can be $xx,xxx or more.

Sometimes the receptionist who answers the phone can teach an SEO a lot about keywords.  That person takes all of the phone calls where people ask....  "duh.... do you sell those bugtussle nimrods?"

[NakulGoyal]

I agree. I would plug those starting point / core keywords into Google Keywords Tool and/or SEMRush and see what you get. Somebody well versed with the industry is helpful but so is someone completely unknown to the industry. Sometimes we call certain things in a certain way, but that's now how majority of the people on the web search.

As Phil said, I would not worry about the age. I would find a subject matter expert, I am sure there are tons of people available on SEOMoz who do freelance. Just see if someone is available, do a small test project and take it from there. If that does not work, sites like Odesk.com have plenty of providers, but then tons of them are offshore. So everything has it's pros and cons.

[PracticeFusion]

Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as qualifying folks by their years of experience. There will be some brilliant SEOs with only one year of experience, and some awful SEOs with 10 years of experience. The same goes for just about every industry.

I'd recommend having someone do this job on a contract basis. For example, have them send you a keyword research report for $500. Then, if you love the report, you might look into signing them up for an hourly contract to keep doing your SEO going forward, or set them up with a monthly retainer. This way if you find someone great you can have them do more work for you, and if you find a "stinker" then you're only out a few hundred bucks.