Seeking SEO Expert (for Long-term partnership with small web design/dev team)

SEO Specialist, I run a small web design team, and looking to find talented and affordable SEO Expert to help manage some basic SEO programs for my clients. FYI: budget set for project is not accurate (to be discussed after we narrow candidates). If it's not worth your time to read our long message, you need not reply. Currently, I do not provide SEO, so looking to find perfect match to build long-term relationship with whom can handle the monthly SEO programs for my clients. Keep in mind, this service (SEO) is new to me, so I am turning to you as SEO professional to explain the processes, methodology, how SEO work is tracked/analyzed, full details on costs or various packages, etc. Important Notes: - We are looking for an individual or a team NO BIGGER than 10 employees. We strongly prefer to work with small teams and individuals. Share details about your team. Big companies need not apply (sorry!) - Currently we have 2 clients interested in small, basic SEO programs, possibly 2 more. Potential for 3-4 SEO clients within first 3-4 months. - The great MAJORITY of our clients will be looking for targeted traffic/optimization. Organic, specific, sometimes geo-based (unsure proper terms lol). BUT, we are NOT seeking just generating MASS traffic #'s to their sites. We want to target certain market segments, keywords, etc. Most SEO offers we get are for mass off-page activities that we really are not looking to focus on. Please let us know if you understand this point and how to focus SEO efforts. Things like spamming message boards, etc. and those generic mass traffic practices is NOT what we're looking for. - What is your expertise in on-page SEO work? That is, ensuring website code/development is fundamentally following best SEO practices. IE: meta-data, proper Google/XML sitemaps, any widgets (ie WP widgets) or modules or approaches we can use to absolutely maximize SEO efficiency of a site. Knowledge in this area is extremely important. We want a true expert that knows how to take a website and make it SEO flawless inside and out: Best practices, most effective clean SEO strategies, etc. Show us you know what you're talking about. Can you take a site right from development build and make it SEO perfect? We want to do things 'the right way' that best sites do for SEO maximization. - We WILL quickly overlook at proposal that is generic copy/pasted message. To prove you've even read this far, let's test: start your response/proposal message with your favorite color. I've hidden this in middle of message. - Cost is very important factor. I specialize in helping small biz's with limited budgets, so although would love to have best SEO person, the best value we can get for our clients matters. Tell us details about your costs. Our first few clients/packages will be looking for very basic starting programs. - Another decision factor is professionalism. Can you or your team communicate regularly? Provide organized and valuable data on the work they are doing? IE: Proper reporting, brainstorming, etc. Elaborate on this with us. I can't stress enough how important clear organization and providing valuable information for smart decision making is. We want to work with SMART PEOPLE :) - Talk a bit specifically about Return on Investment for clients. How do they determine value/return of SEO programs? How do we measure this? IE: benchmarks, analytic and recommendation report, etc.? How do we justify costs? I get e-mails from SEO groups daily, but it is more or less 'noise' with the same generic copy/paste messages as everyone else. I'd love to see is some actual personal responses. To me, this shows sincere interest in building partnership . Keep your message concise and to the point. The more clear and organized you can present yourself and your services, is huge advantage. If you've taken the time to read and consider this, you're already ahead of most SEO teams. Can't wait to hear from you, and appreciate your time!