It drives me insane when I see people being taken advantage of because so called ‘experts’ give them bad advice.
So my advice to you today is be careful.
Be very careful who you take advice from. No matter what credentials they give you.
How do you protect yourself from bogus ‘Experts’? Here’s my advice:
Understand what you are hiring them to do
The biggest problem I see with people who outsource things like search engine optimization, website building or other tasks like that is they know absolutely nothing about it. Unless you have someone you trust completely (preferably someone you’ve known for a very long time) then I strongly advice against just picking an ‘expert’ and laying it all in their hands. That plan can go wrong, very wrong!
So if you’re looking for a quick fix you’ll be dissapointed. My recommendation is before you hire someone for something like SEO, email marketing, social media, websites, etc you MUST do your homework.
Don’t blindly hire out work before you understand what you are hiring them for. Spend a few hours on the internet researching what you need. Yes I know this is going to take you time but it won’t take as long as actually doing it yourself and it won’t take as long as having to hire and fire over and over again because people are not doing what you expect them to.
p.s. If you need to build an internet presence this year and want someone you CAN trust I do offer website and blog designs to a limited number of clients. You can find out more by visiting here: BlogSiteMojo.com
Researching the expert should include at least Binging or Googling the expert's personal name and company name. If a name is more than one word, put it in quotes for the search.
Example, using my name:
“Will Bontrager”
Sometimes it happens that a name is the same as a celebrity or many people have the same name. In my case, the bicycle brand “Bontrager” may be the reason for some inappropriate results. And there is also a judge “William Bontrager” – in the same US State as where I live, no less.
Searching for the name and appending +forum or +recommend or +”not recommend” can narrow the focus. Examples:
“Will Bontrager” +forum
“Will Bontrager” +recommend
“Will Bontrager” +”not recommend”
Note: There are people who will say negative and malicious untrue things about others with the intent to ruin online reputations. If you find negative entries, it may be prudent to give the expert you are researching the opportunity to respond.
After all that, dig into the expert's domain name.
If your domain registrar does not provide a whois lookup, you may go to http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools and use the WHOIS/IPWHOIS Lookup tool on that page. Type in the domain name.
Example, using one of my domains:
willmaster.com
Now, Bing or Google the name under the Registrant section. The address and telephone number, too, if you want to dig deeper.
(If the Registrant section is anonymous or uses an anonymous email address, consider carefully whether or not you want to do business with someone who hides who they are or where they are located. NOTE: It is common and recommended by some to record an email address different than the domain. The reason is so the registration record can be updated even if the domain web site should for some reason be unavailable.)
Another thing to check on the domain registration record is the date the domain was created. When you look at the willmaster.com registration record, you'll see
Created on: 20-FEB-98
Consider how long the company says they have been in business and verify the domain registration creation date is consistent with that claim.
If the company does not say how long they have been in business, the domain registration creation date can be an indication, albeit not a certainty.
[Angela, this became a rather long comment. If you prefer to use it as a guest blog post, instead, please do so.]
Twitter: AngelaWills
says:
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Will and great suggestion on making it a blog post. I’ve got it schedule for tomorrow in the am but I’ll just leave your comment here as well.
Saw your blog bookmarked on Digg.
Saw your blog bookmarked on Digg.