Job Description Examples for Outsourcing an SEO Project

Those who love to write enjoy "freebies" on the Net. Thanks to web 2.0 technologies, they're able to self-publish - albeit on a modest scale. They get a lot of satisfaction as they blog their way to blogosphere and earn the admiration of friends and family.

Then there are the few fortunate ones who have managed to blog or write consistently and are now on their second, third or fourth year of self-publishing. It's a thrill of a ride. Having just posted their umpteenth blog or umpteenth web page, they're ecstatic that they can count on their creativity and resourcefulness to keep them focused on their writing goals.

There's just one problem?

It's a thorny issue that's beginning to churn inside and out: all that time and effort towards self-publishing - is it paying off? You have a food blog that's earned praises, but shouldn't you also be earning a few dollars for your hard work?

Sure, friends and family read your blog regularly, leave comments and even recommend it to their friends and family. Your site is growing in terms of visitor traffic. But does Google, Yahoo or MSN know you exist? Why isn't your site appearing on their search results, even if your friends and family keep saying, "your site's so cool"! Do any of their engine crawlers "yawn" when they spot your site or blog? Are you getting the royal snub?

When you started out, you wanted your blog or web page to be an extension of your ego. Your main goal was to be read by those who shared the same interests, nothing else. Then you started hearing stories about how people were raking in the dollars and getting Google checks in the mail - income they've generated from their blogs and web sites.

Someone drops the hint that your content is good but your blog or site is not search engine optimized. You decide it's time to monetize your site because you want to get paid - at least modestly - for all the content you've posted. People have said how much they've learned from you. You also want your site to be read by strangers here and abroad, not just your family and their friends' friends.

An SEO expert said your food blog has great income potential but the way it's "structurally" set up is what's preventing you from getting noticed.

Okay, time to get down to real business. From now on, you're not only paying attention to your sauces, gravies and exotic delicacies but to those SEO ingredients as well!

Overall Plan:
I have a food blog that's getting decent traffic. I say decent because my visitors give in to some arm twisting by friends and family. My site's not getting the attention of Google, Yahoo or MSN, nor it is getting visited by people outside my own circle. My short term goal is to get the major search engines to notice me; my long term goal is to keep my food blog search engine optimized consistently.

I'm looking for an SEO expert who can get my food blog in the first three pages of Google, Yahoo or MSN. If you can get it on page 1 I'll be happy and reward you. But the first three pages would be a good start. I want my SEO efforts to start slow but on a sure footing, so I'm not going all out on 4 cylinders%u2026not yet anyway. Let's take it one step at a time.

Nature of Project:
This project represents my initial SEO effort. What I want done is for you to go through all my blog posts and tell me how I can better optimize them by way of changing their titles, introducing meta tags and using keywords that the search engines will pick up. The second task is to come up with a link building strategy for my blog.

Compensation:
I will pay a fixed fee for this initial project - which is basically a "cleaning up" of my blog posts and a strategy for link building. If you do a good job; that is, get my blog into the first three pages of the search engines after 30 days, I'd like to hire you for the second project - pay-per-click and article submissions to directories.

Details:
user name and password to my food blog will be released to the winning bidder. I will send more details to shortlisted candidates but this posting should give you a clear idea of what I want to accomplish.

I'd love to hear about your SEO skills. When you respond to my bid, please write the words "white hat SEO" to assure me that you've read this job description until the end.

Thank you.

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The job description above is neither too short nor too long. This gives the freelancer an idea of your basic requirements. In most cases, this would suffice.

However, it often happens that the design of a particular project has to be revised a few times because something is missing. This is often because key data was not communicated properly. After you receive bids, you send out a detailed project spec (specification sheet) so your freelancer has more information to work with.

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About my food blog:
I write about anything that's related to food and drink. Each blog is posted with at least one photo; some come with two to three photos, while others have a youtube or a slide presentation. I use slide.com. I try to post twice a week; on the odd time when things are hectic, I post once a week.

My food blog started in 2005 so there are close to 200 postings in it - your garden variety of breads, budget meals, desserts, sauces, and breakfast recipes.

As you can see, I've gone about my postings in a natural, spontaneous way without any consideration for SEO purposes. For instance, if I post a recipe about beef, I would title it "one of dad's favorites - beef with lemon and soy sauce." An SEO expert would probably say that the word beef should be the first word that appears in the title.

I don't know anything about meta tags, so I'd like to start using them now and would like some guidance from you on this.

Sometimes when I write about a particular dish and the recipe comes from a company like King Arthur Flour in Vermont, I drop them a note saying I used their recipe on my blog in the hopes to get them to visit my blog. I get good responses from them and 99% do visit my blog and leave comments. I guess you could call that a hint of SEO good practice, but obviously I need to do more than just drop people a line.

Which takes us now to Link Building!

Link Building:
I need a link building strategy that will make my food blog more visible so that it gets picked up by the major search engines.

From the limited research I did, Google and the others have become a lot smarter about links. They can now detect trusted links from bogus links. I'll never be able to understand Google's algorithms, in much the same way I'll never be able to predict the stock market. I hear Google changes their formulas almost constantly. Just when you think you've hit the mark, it goes off setting new standards.

My questions therefore are:
(a) What trusted links should we target for a food blog like mine?
(b) How many links should we build?
(c) How do we measure the effectiveness rate of a link? (e.g. page rank, visitor traffic, hits, etc)
(d) How do I get other sites to link to my site? In other words, what steps should I take to build and develop link popularity (bearing in mind that Google frowns on artificially created links)?

Let's get to work! Look forward to your proposal!
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Use these examples to compare to your own project descriptions. It is up to you how you use this information but it will make a significant difference to providers who view your project if they can see your needs presented in an ordered and detailed fashion.

Happy Outsourcing

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