Choosing the SEO consultant for you should entail some type of research as you want to find a consultant that is going to provide the results they promise, while managing expectations on both sides, and this means an honest and open relationship between the two of you.
Having a Consultant who undersells and over performs is fantastic, but this is not always easy when you are offering a limited budget and demanding results exceeding this.  If both your requirements are understand, expectations are managed correctly and roles have been clearly communicated, you are both likely to be happy with the course and direction of the campaign.
Contracts
A contract is a necessity, not a luxury and it is the job of the consultant to draw it up correctly. Even though they might not be able to control the outcomes of the campaign, the contract should reflect what both your roles are, what is controllable and what work will be involved.
However, it cannot focus only on the type of work that will be done, it must also define in exact terms both your roles and defined outcome based, results driven objectives. If you are promised unrealistic outcomes, like number one rankings, question this carefully.
Each of you has responsibilities and neither should hide behind a cleverly crafted contract. The contract should reflect honesty on both parts and address any results of the campaign not performing, why and how to address these reasons as well as illustrating what will be involved if you decide to part company.
Expectations
One expectation your ant has not control over is Rankings. However you have a right to be disappointed if your consultant provides their own manufactured keyword lists that provide little or not traffic and therefore no benefit. In the same breath even if you have highly competitive phrase, you should not expect instant top rankings, and this expectation must be explained carefully. It is however, the SEO’s job to investigate and figure out what the problems are and fix them where possible.
Another expectation is Traffic and once your SEO makes changes to your site, you should expect an increase. However, these figures can be manipulated and at the end of the day if you are not attracting targeted traffic you might not be getting what you expect from your consultant.
Conversions: The SEO should never do anything that reduces the raw number of conversions. But it’s only partially the SEO’s job to actually help improve conversion rates.
And most importantly ROI which is ultimately what you need your campaign to provide. It’s not just about whether your keywords are in position 4 or 6, or if you get 10,000 qualified visitors vs. 100,000 unqualified, or even if your conversion rate improves, no, what you should be looking at is getting a positive return from your financial investment, and is that return sufficient? If have an open relationship with your SEO they will tell you that they don’t want you to have expectations of a positive return before the time invested
