PTC

Content
If you really care about your website, this is more difficult for you than for someone who is just hiring out reviews for their minisites. Even a great writer will not be able to write well in terms of conversions and long tail SEO performance. My best advice for this is to give your writers a format to follow. I usually ask for something like this; 5 bullet points, intro and hook text, meat, post-meat conversion attempt text. Topics and specifics are usually easy for a good writer as long as you give them something to follow for format.


Outsource Your Template Design
There is only one type of person who can do this properly and that is a designer. Designers can code, coders can do SEO, people who do SEO can usually code, everyone can write content... but if your template was not designed by a pro, it will be painfully obvious. This will hurt your avg time on site, conversions, and can even be counter-productive to making business deals.

Web 2.0 Functions
This is another aspect that almost has to get outsourced to a professional. The tricky part is that someone who does acceptable work is not really going to help you reach your potential. Since creativity and capability are usually the constraints here, it's almost impossible for your site to reach it's potential without giving someone free reign and the ability to try ideas that you could never have thought of. Someone who can do this well for you can be hard to find in a pile of resumes. If you find them, just pay them whatever they ask for.

With regards to the 3 aspects above, one of the most important things that you can do is figure out exactly what you want before you start really getting into anything with someone. It's fine to probe around and see what someone is capable of, but one of the biggest leaks of time and effort is when a webmaster can't figure out what they want or how they want something done. Make some demo pages on a desktop or private version of your site, you can even just use photoshop to mock things up and map out ideas visually.

SEO
The first advice I got from anyone in this industry was to learn SEO. One of the things that I have learned is that basic SEO isn't hard, its mostly just about not screwing things up and not doing anything wrong on your site. Most people can handle this and just pop into the forums if there is a question or an issue. If you are building an empire, you might want to consider outsourcing this element of your websites development. The issue of how to outsource off-site SEO was raised in a thread that I started here on PAL not too long ago. The largest issue is accountability and just the ability to keep track of what kind of work is being done.

To outsource SEO, you really need to have some kind of database to work with, or a spread sheet at the least. You can create one if you know what you want or you can use an online service like buzzstream. The key elements to something like this are the following.

-The ability to track who you have contacted and view correspondences.
-Ability to monitor purchased advertising for it's presence, nofollow attribute, # of outgoing links on a page (so you can see if someone is selling out a page that you bought into as a solo link w/expensive deal).

You can also outsource just a portion of your off-site SEO efforts; you can hire someone just to log opportunities. This is much simpler and often much cheaper than hiring a true SEO guru. Then... you can come in and evaluate link opportunities, start relationships and handle payments yourself. I wouldn't suggest going beyond this level of outsourcing until you know that you have someone who is savvy in SEO, business, and will represent your website well among advertisers and competition.

As a more general tip; do your research before you hire someone for any large projects. We have all heard nightmare stories about junk product/services and money issues when people start to outsource. I suggest looking around the forums and see who everyone else is using for their services. Find someone with a good reputation and strong skills, get them on your IM list, and don't be rude and try to bargain down the price of their services unless you are pulling some weight (A big project or ongoing projects).

Be sure to lay out all of your expectations and discuss payments. Decide in your head how much tolerance you will have for laziness and mistakes. If you know exactly when you are going to fire someone, this makes the decision and entire process of working with substandard folks much less stressful. It sucks getting rid of someone; be nice, be leniant, be understanding, but know how much you will take and when the time comes, be ruthless with your decision - this is business and this is money, nothing personal. If your expectations were laid out clearly, firing someone should be a simple process.

Written By Mark W.
Design SEO and Web Services Directory