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Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.  I'm working on A and B now and should roll out the changes in the next couple of weeks

This has been very helpful and I'll look at my SEO on a monthly basis instead of a weekly.

Thanks for the direction.  I'm glad Rand provided the answers to the questions and will use the information in searching for a candidate.

Thanks for the direction.  I'm glad Rand provided the answers to the questions and will use the information in searching for a candidate.

Thank you.  I guess I don't want my company to be penalized for inappropriate SEO activity.  The only way I know that a vendor is delivering quality is by measuring the results with statistics.  I know that SEO has much to do with art as it does science.  My problem is accountability and transparency.

Is it taboo to ask for references in the SEO world?

I have a small company that has struggled over the past three years to get on its feet.  We've finally made it in the retail sector building a nice client base and delivering beyond what is expected.

I'm trying not to make mistakes and have been doing the SEO on my own with a SEO word pack plug in for our Wordpress site and all the training videos I could handle from SEOMOZ and Hubspot (forever grateful).  I have a list of 200 key words and only a handful are on the first page, but with that it has meant the difference between getting paycheck for not.

It's now time for us to hire an expert.  Here's what I want.

1.  Quality back links with a MOZ grade higher than mine.

2.  All the errors fixed in my site that I don't understand from the reports generated by the MOZ tool.

3.  A weekly report of the sites that have created a link and its MOZ ranking.

4.  Ongoing support and tracking of progress with no black hat techniques.

5.  3 client references with a name and number that I can speak to.

Am I asking too much?  I'm told that client information is confidential and couldn't be release.  If I'm in a completely different sector of retail, would that matter?

What questions should I be asking?  If you were me, what would you do?