How does one make a strong portfolio for a new SEO agency?

Google's official stance is that they are "roughly equivalent" and recommends to do what is technically simpler to implement (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MswMYk05tk). With that said, I'd recommend a directory over a subdomain. Doing this consolidates signals to a single domain, which should then theoretically build more authority for all pages off of that single domain. This consolidation of authority results in rank increases, which have been documented here: http://moz.com/community/q/moz-s-official-stance-on-subdomain-vs-subfolder-does-it-need-updating. A subdomain would split signals from the blog and the rest of the root domain content. So while Google "says" they're roughly equivalent, SEOs have seen tangible evidence that sticking to a single domain can be beneficial. If you're able to go with www.iconery.com/editorial/, I'd choose that. Hope this helps!

We work with one of the big cruise sites in the UK and it's all about making the site deserve to rank higher by continually improving the site via design & content. Google wants to rank popular sites so you need to (as Simon points out) figure out ways of getting influential sites to talk about you and link to you. PR is the only real way to build links these days.

There are basically two types of SEO outfits. There are the "chop shops" of the world offering dated solutions like link building, etc and charging a monthly fee for supposed maintenance. Then there are credible experts who understand that the overall experience of the web assets is what catapults KPI's. One of the most important factors that's widely overlooked is technical compliance which experts adhere to and follow closer than a CPA follows tax law changes. Having said all that, ultimately, you get what you pay for. A proper outfit will charge you an appropriate fee to get your assets optimized. They will rarely charge you for monthly "maintenance" and instead may offer additional experiential suggestions for the brand. My final bit of advice is budgeting for this service so that you're not stuck learning and guessing trying to reinvent the wheel. Many try and eventually hire an expert.

The cost of SEO depends a great deal on three things: 1) The specific services being offered (SEO, social media, content strategy, etc.) 2) The degree in which those services will be implemented (how many hours per month) 3) the skill and experience level of the SEOs involved. $800/month is a pretty small investment if you consider all the layers to making a web marketing campaign successful. My company will usually not touch any fully-managed web marketing campaign for less than $1500/month and that's at the low end of the aggressiveness meter even for a pretty basic site. A larger ecommerce site might start around $5K and go up from there. Overall, you want to look for value and results. You'll want to know how long the SEO has been in business and when looking at proposals you need to understand the amount of time the company will be investing in the campaign. You also want to spell out your goals and establish the expectations on how/when those goals will be achieved. When the SEO and client don't have the same expectations, that can lead to issues later on. But if you know what the goals are you can both be on the same page from the start.

Hi, Your site is a Q&A so I presume that every time someone create a new Question it will generate a unique URL for that. Indepentend if you have or not an answer you want Google to crawl and index your site as quick as possible to start to analyzing the new page and bring traffic to it. The best way to expedite this "re-crawling" is to use a ping service that you can trigger after your user answer the question. PS: If you site is updated frequently you shouldn't have a problem with crawling, because Google usually identify this type of website really quick. Drop me a call is free for this week. Best,