[sjohnson403]

If you find someone good, keep them! Reliable SEO freelancers seem surprisingly difficult to find. The best ones I've worked with were honest when something wasn't working instead of pretending every month was a success.

 

[jbates69754]

I’d ask potential freelancers how they measure success. If their entire answer is just “more backlinks” or “higher rankings,” I'd probably keep looking. Traffic quality and actual business results matter too.

 

[ShawnaBarber]

For a first project, I'd probably give them access to the necessary tools and let them do an audit. Their audit can tell you a lot about how seriously they approach SEO and whether their recommendations are actually useful.