I have used a number of different of BST offerings at BHW over the past three years and have paid for most of them. They ranged from pure white hat to some blackhat efforts. Not surprisingly, some of the services were outstanding and other left me as we say, feeling somewhat lukewarm. So what do I look for when I outsource SEO work? For me there are six elements: communication, timeliness, quality, completion of work, page rank impact, reporting and finally the payment transaction itself. I also look for reviews and I take any singular review as being anecdotal but instead I rely on the aggregate of reviews and the overall trend. Over the past couple of weeks I had the opportunity to do a review for WPN?s article service and so here's the report card:
1. Quality of Work: In this case how well written are the articles? Does the content make sense and how does it fit into the overall subject matter of the blog? Obviously, an article about collectible dolls is not going to make sense in a blog entirely about exercise and nutrition. Also, were the page ranks of the sites posted to in line with the vendor?s description? In this review and remember I am somewhat picky about content, I was more than pleasantly surprised. They were readable, appear unique and were actually illustrated nicely. They weren?t just spun but appear to be fresh new copy.
Grade: A, best articles I have seen to date.
2. Communication: blog articles don?t require much so this grade is a little less important. Grade: A
3. Timeliness: All work should be executed in a timely manner and if dates had been communicated to the vendor they should be adhered to. Any delays by the vendor should also be communicated because we all know stuff happens. Grade: A
4. Completion: we all have had vendors do 90% of the works and then... well you know the other 10% just hangs in the air and for some reason is never completed. In this case all work was completed in a timely manner. Grade: A
5. Page Rank Impact: with Google Penguin assessing penalties to site for poor quality links there is nothing worse than paying for a service that negatively impacts your site. If you are interest in a negative rep campaign then there are ton of Fiverr gigs you can enlist but to me that is just nonsense. I don?t expect to see any sudden rise in the SERPs since this is a relatively new site but I will monitor and I do get regular link reports. Grade: To Be Determined.
6. Pricing & Payment Transaction: Not Applicable but pricing seems reasonable.
7. Reporting: adequate, nothing fancy: Grade B+
I should point out if I had a problem with the service I wouldn?t even bother with a report card; it?s just worth it to my overall reputation at BHW. Fortunately for me, WPN is very capable of delivering a quality service and more importantly you can feel confident that the service will help your site in the SERPs and not flag your site to Google. I hope to have some updates in the near future.