Author: Maria

Asking for advice from SEO experts is not easy. Many companies require their employees to gather expert advice and publish roundups on their websites.  Lately many small business owners ask for SEO expert advice in regards to various search engine optimization topics. Researchers proved that asking questions from experts is a sign of being intelligent. Therefore seeking advice increases perceptions of competence.

According to Hofmann et al. (2009) advice seeking is a type of help seeking behavior.  Hofmann defines help seeking as “the act of asking others for assistance, information, advice, or support” (p. 1262). In most cases, the help seeker aims to reduce her costs to achieve a desired outcome. When people seek advice from others, they are asking others to recommend either a solution or a process to address a challenge (e.g., Albrecht and Goldsmith 2003, Gino 2008, Goldsmith and Fitch 1997, Goldsmith and MacGeorge 2000, Harvey and Fischer 1997).

Professional approach for seeking expert SEO’s advice

When you send an email to an expert, your message should answer to the following questions:

• Purpose of advice seeking
• What motivates you to seek an expert’s advice
• Why are you asking SEO expert’s advice?
• Give a background about SEO expert’ s competency related to the topic
• Being gracious: for example send a “thank you” note after receiving expert’s reply
• Information about the date of roundup publishing. In case of delay, send him or her a short message.
• Send a link to published article
• Communicate with expert
• A roundup shouldn’t be too long, it won’t be SEO friendly

Here is an example:

Nikolay Stoyanov is an example of a professional seo expert.

Nick ( his contact information is below under references) contacted me very politely and asked for my advice and insight on Google penguin algorithm and SEO. Although I was very busy, but his message was so compelling that it made me to make time for him and have a session with him in regards to his questions. He kept a high level of professionalism throughout the process and at the end offered a published link. Since he did a good job, we decided to help him and get his article a maximum exposure across social network and search engines .We believed such professional SEO expert deserves recognition in social media.

I get a lot of questions from companies around the world in various languages to my email box. People ask me technical and digital marketing related questions and i do my best to reply to their queries. Since these questions are technical, my assistants forward them to me. So I am the only one who takes care of them.

The other day another guy asked me about what SEO tools I use. He created a roundup and asked from more than 90 SEO experts about what type of SEO tool they use. I replied and didn’t get any message. After 3 weeks he sent me a link to his article. When I clicked at the article, I saw that he got both my name and the website wrong. His article had a lot of typos. This type of roundup has a negative impact. Because those who read the article see that this person did not care much to get the expert’s name right.

Then the same guy contacted me a few months later and asked me if i had any new updates,  although i was busy i sent him the new update about the tools i use. I had hoped he would do it right, guess what? He didn’t. A few days later he sent me a link to the article. It was the same thing but a longer post. He added 50 more people. There was no trace of my new content. I asked him what was the point of asking me for an update? You didn’t add the content I gave you. It was actually some news about Google Analytics which was useful for people.  The man didn’t reply. This was a very unprofessional job.His roundup looked way too spammy with a lot of banners and confusing. It wasn’t good not for humans nor search engines.

A lot of what getting someone to help you with your roundup comes down to is being genuine and thoughtful. Take your time and craft a well-written, error-free message. It tells the expert that you care about their expert advice and your own roundup.
You should double and triple-check how to spell expert’s name. Addressing me as “Maria” is far from a deal-breaker, it makes me feel like you haven’t put very much effort into your message. After all, it’s such a simple thing to do.

Take your time and proofread what you post on your roundup article. It shows the degree of your professionalism.

You should check the expert’s name and last name” Maria Johnsen” shouldn’t be a difficult name. It is an easy thing to do and at the same time shows your professionalism in your interview gathering effort. Both advice seeking in particular and help seeking in general are important to small businesses and organizations. The decision to seek help involves potential costs and benefits for the self and the organization. Knowledge is what you’re after, isn’t it? Focus on starting a dialogue rather than confirming an opinion.

A good roundup will land you a job or sell, so take your time and do it right.

 

References:
Hofmann DA, Lei Z, Grant A (2009) Seeking help in the shadow
of doubt: The sensemaking processes underlying how nurses
decide who to ask for advice. J. Appl. Psych. 94(5):1261–1274.

Goldsmith DJ (1992) Managing conflicting goals in supportive interaction: An integrative theoretical framework. Comm. Res. 19(2):264–286. Goldsmith DJ (1999) Content-based resources for giving face sensitive advice in troubles talk episodes. Res. Language Soc. Interaction 32(4):303–336.

Goldsmith DJ (2000) Soliciting advice: The role of sequential placement in mitigating face threat. Comm. Monogr. 67(1):1–19.

Goldsmith DJ, Fitch K (1997) The normative context of advice as social support. Human Comm. Res. 23(4):454–476.

Goldsmith DJ, MacGeorge EL (2000) The impact of politeness and relationship on perceived quality of advice about a problem. Human Comm. Res. 26(2):234–263.

Nikolay Stoyanov has 8 years experience as an seo expert. visit his site: niksto.com

 

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