With respect to Alastair, SEO is easily a learnable skill. He's correct that it's far from "set and forget" as it perhaps once was (and is sometimes touted to be) however one can easily learn it.
The SEO agencies (and their horrid cousins the SEO-outsourcing-sweatshops) don't particularly want most people to know this. It's hard to "sell SEO" because people get burned a lot by dodgy operators, see it as a short term investment (which it's not) and usually end up with some solid bill shock at the end. As he has said, it does require effort and more importantly *time commitment* on an ongoing fashion. Even the smartest SEO guy around still needs to take quite a bit of time to actually learn the market segment, optimise piece by piece and create (hopefully) unique, interesting content. Of course, if you're optimising for something like "credit card comparison" I would be looking at hiring the A++++++++ expert, whether inhouse or "seo shop" makes little difference. Any stupidly competitive keyword will always require constant tweaking and effort. As an example, I work as a consultant in social media. It's now a much more competitive market than it was 5 years ago. And there are businesses who are looking for a basic hand-holding "get me set up" type thing, and there are others who are looking to work out exactly what in their $2m social media budget is ultimately selling stuff. The two are totally different markets. SEO is the same. For the former (the "get started with social media, show you the ropes, give you tips and tricks, set up the software" etc) there are a lot of people who can teach you that. And you can easily learn it, and grow to be quite successful in the space, possibly even in a day or two of time. Happily and comfortably. You'll have to keep up-to-date with the trends and changes, but ultimately a slight shift in how images are displayed on Twitter won't make or break you. The other camp is different -- and usually requires a *lot * more expertise, often more than is available inhouse at many big brands (+/- they also see value in an independent evaluation from time to time). So good for you for wanting to learn. And don't let anyone tell you that you can't. But learning does mean sustained effort both to continue the work, and also to stay up to date. Outsourcing is ultimately an easy way to buy yourself the time that would go into both learning and doing the work -- that's how it works after all! Regarding your actual question, Alex is right on the money - places like Meetup are probably a good first place. Ultimately what you want to do though is approach it as looking for someone for a 3 month contract role....so essentially I'd treat it as with any job offering -- put up an ad, distribute it (meetup would be a good place) and then see how you go. There are a *lot* of shonky operators here as well as overseas so you need to tread with a little bit of caution, but that is no different to hiring a dev/comms/sales/whatever person. My 2c. I'm probably opening a bit of debate about SEO here which is a bit off-topic but I think that there are a lot of brands needlessly throwing money at external parties (as in social media consulting) that they could do inhouse. Hugh On Tuesday, 10 June 2014 21:41:30 UTC+10, Alex Rahr wrote: > > http://www.meetup.com/Online-Marketing-Sydney/ + > http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-SEO/ are good places to start looking. > > On Tuesday, 10 June 2014 16:31:44 UTC+10, Matt Salter wrote: >> >> Hi folks, >> >> We're looking to engage an SEO expert for up to three months who can work >> with us to improve our SEO and train us in SEO at the same time. I've seen >> SEO full service providers and SEO training courses, but we we're looking >> for a SEO service provider who will train us to maintain it and keep >> improving it on our own. Any recommendations for where I could be looking? >> >> Matt >> > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Vist http://siliconbeachaustralia.org for more Forum rules 1) No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. 2) No jobs postings. You can use http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/jobs To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Silicon Beach Australia" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
