Link packages vs. Virtual assistants

may be SEO is batter then Virtual assistants

James, 3 years back i was having 10 VAs working in 2 teams for my SEO projects, it sounds glamorous, BUT, the huge but, is, they suck the hell outta your life.

Your time. Your energy. Your life.

I had to train them one by one, and even then most are not able to learn the things you teach fast enough, they make mistakeSSSSSSSSS, and in the end of the day, I had to edit those myself, then, they drag your time, by not showing up, by not working on time etc etc..

I had to spend my entire morning, 8.30am til 2pm, just checking through them, talking to them, editing their mistakes, etc. And believe me i have also tried assigning a team leader, which manages the other members, which didn't work because even the team leader themselves will get lazy. They fake up reports on things they have not done.

Now. If you ask me, I'd still use VA, but wisely. They only do writings, and my product supports. SEO i outsource, to other companies. But because I was heavily involved in SEO, i know which SEO suppliers are genuine, which are bullshiting, and best is they send you reports regularly, which i can tell if those are faked up or not, by doing a reverse search..

And i don't just hire one SEO supplier, i look for mini-task suppliers, 1 will be doing social links, 1 will be doing forum postings, etc. They are more expensive, but it takes you SO MUCH less time to be concern about and you can start focusing on the bigger pictures.

Having said all these, SEO is no more SEO like those days, content is everything now. You can be doing social links and other shitz but those would help you for about 20%, maybe less, 80% you should focus on genuine content, syndicating them to other blog owners (NOT your fake mini blogs), syndicating to your business/niche facebook page, twitter etc.

Focus on Quality sharable content, others will pick it up and share and you get really quality links. That, is SEO.

Try to think from other perspective - if you had some really good SEO knowledge (that is easily worth $10/hour), would you like to work for someone you don't even know for $300 a month? The fact is that most people working for this money are just waiting for a chance to get more money and if someone else will offer them $320 a month, they will go. And you will have to do all the work yourself again. This problem can be easily solved - all you need to do is find some reliable people (I've found many on oDesk) and then invest your time and money in them. If they work well (=they bring you money), increase their salary, if they don't, fire them. With some time, you will have a team of professionals that won't need much managing.

Your other option is to hire local people - they will need to come in your office every day and you will be able to see what they are doing all the time.

virtual assistant is better in my opinion..but if you have more time, just do it by your self and learn about SEO

It very much depends on the VA.

I prefer to pay a fixed rate for a set amount of work (eg. 100 forum posts) rather than use a time based payment system. Paying by the hour is (in my opinion) one of the worst ways to to get things done, since the less efficient the person is, the more they end up getting paid!

If you do use a VA have fixed performance targets that they need to meet each week (x links, x articles, x forum posts, etc).

While you can luck out and get some great VAs, you will always have a certain amount of training you have to do, and if that VA leaves then you have to go through the process again with the replacement.

If you have a huge variety of bits and pieces that need done, then a VA is worth considering, otherwise it works out cheaper and less of a headache to sign up to an SEO service or buy SEO packages.

Been considering this too. Only issue is I'm a bit power crazy so want to keep all my sites in my full control.

When it comes to SEO, it is better to hire a consultant or company and give him the total responsibility for the SEO. That will bring you better results. If you are using VA for that, you have to put more time and it will be harder to manage many people who are from different locations at the same time. On the other hand, if you have short website maintenance jobs, copywriting tasks, and etc - VA is wise choice for such jobs.

VA's with SEO experience ain't really hard to find. The hard part is VAs that really WORK.

They can have all the SEO knowledge that you need, but if they don't work, or don't work efficiently. It's nothing.

On the other hand, VAs that can work hard, but don't know a thing, you could assign them some repititive tasks (rotate different tasks every 2 days, they get bored quickly trust me) and still be very efficient on it.

But going back to what I had said, as of now, i personally prefer hiring out mini-SEO tasks to multiple companies (Good ones), not individuals.. This takes all the managing work out of me, i just get reports sent to my email weekly and know what's going on while planning out affiliate campaigns.

You're much better off using a VA if you can afford it. It gives you much more control over your link building campaigns and these days thats a very important thing.

Hey, the way I do it is I find the leads through LinkedIn. Do a 1-1 consultation on phone. Offer my clients some options: I have private coaching starting at $500 per month for 4 weekly sessions and I have 3 seo/social media services: $1,000 per month for 40 hours a month of work, $1,500 per month for 80 hours of work a month and $2,000 per month for 160 hours a month of work. I make the difference between that and what I pay the VA's.

Plus there are slight bonuses I get, like when 2 clients get an 80 hr/mo employee, I just pay for one VA and split his time 50/50 between the 2 sites, lol, so I make an extra $1,000/ mo that way. Or works even better when I get 4 clients that sign on for 40 hours a month because that get's me an extra $2k per month where I just get one VA and now split his time 4 ways, lol! When that happens, I give VA a bonus.

So, I do the coaching and create the strategy for the client and then I outsource all the work to my "team". I used to have the $300 per month VA's, had 6 FT at one point, some are good and loyal, but most aren't and you do have to train them all, that is a pain.

I went through several VA's, then I stumbled upon a place that has many trained VA's that are pretty affordable and is working awesome, but like they already mentioned, I do pay a little more for these quality guys, not much more but it allows me to keep my prices low and provide quality work.

My VA's also come with a private supervisor that manages my VA's for me onsite. I get a daily report of what they did and they get a complete set up with desk, phone, internet, security card and they punch in, so I know they are working, I know the work get's done and it's good work. Everyone is happy.

Now here's a real world example, I got a new local client the other day, and after the first month with my VA, they told me they were firing their other SEO guy they hired for another site they own and are hiring me to do the work now, and it's only been one month, so my guys are good.

I'm upfront with client too. I tell them that I do very little if ANY of the actual work myself, because I have a team that does the work. It positions me as a business that is not a one person show, like most of my competition.

I tell client I focus on strategy and what to do and then my team will do the tasks. The VA's are like robots, they will do the work but I have to provide the tasks. It works out good though client is happy, I'm working a few hours a month on each of my clients site, like coming up with new things to do, I consult with the clients at least once a month but most I do every 2 weeks.

Also I set the clients up with Google analytics and let them track all that stuff. We don't really provide any charts or stats and just say if you really want to know just look yourself whenever you want. In fact, I tell client that we don't focus on Google rankings. And any SEO/Social Media manager that does is wasting your money.

I'd be real cautious on buying stuff if you focus on Google rankings. I wouldn't focus too much on the fiverr stuff and the real cheap 100 back link packages either. If anything has specific numbers like that, like get 500 high pr back links for $20, run. Your VA can do all that manually. SEO takes time, first month is usually set up and I say try it out for 3 months. 3 months is a good amount of time to see results, esp for local companies.

Plus like @jasontim86 said, SEO now is about content. Focus on the content and syndication and re-purposing the content because the real search engines are people. I'd be cautious about outsourcing the content. Most writing is cheap, spun and sucks. Do it your self, or hire someone that is good and you may have to find multiple writers based on multiple niches for example one of my clients is an IT company and I don't really know how I could write content for them, so either they have to write it, which sucks, or you have to write it, which sucks, or you have to find and hire a writer and hope they don't suck, make sense? lol!

It's all about relationships with people now, not search engines. Just focus on content that is interesting, not boring and not salesy, let your/their blog or landing page do the selling, you just provide good content, that's what seo is now. Go out of your way to promote other people's content too, and refer other people leads (like a LinkedIn strategy). The more other people you help and promote, the more people you will get helping you. Your VA's can help you do all that other stuff too, buying set packages can't.

Well, hope this helps and best of luck.

Preston

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Important Link Building Methods You Should Know

It depends. If you really are updated with the different seo techniques and you have the time and you are willing to wear all the different hats, then you need not hire a va. I've been hiring and working with VAs in the Philippines and they are very hard working and well-trained. I have good experiences with virtual assistants than bad.