My son is a sophomore, we are at the beginning of college recruiting........I am looking for suggestions?
Lets put the recruiting website/service aside for moment.
For 10th grader, your kid needs at least one highlight video (showing him with and without the ball in the position he is playing from elevated viewpoint, showing his vitals - height, weight, graduation year, cumulative GPA - and recommend talking and introducing himself in the video.). Host that as a private video on Youtube or alike and prepared to include the link to coaches of interest, when contacting.
Identify school of interest without soccer first. There's always a chance that the kid may quit or get injured and there is no soccer so its important to make sure that the school fits first. Once you've identified at least half a dozen or so schools, then contact the coach as a function of tournaments your kid is playing. Don't expect east coast school coaches to show up for a local tournaments. Exceptions being Surf ManCity Cup and Surf Cup. If your kid is playing DA, then its order of magnitude simpler as almost all coaches attend the DA showcases and playoffs. Plan to attend 1~2 ID camps over the summer so that he can get a sense of what is expected.
Update the highlight video by the end of the summer with recent (spring~summer) footages and updated vitals by the end of the summer. We've found Winter ID camps to be more effective than summer in terms of players to coach ratio.
Coaches can contact the player starting September 1 of junior year so the communication can be routine.
Now back to the recruiting website/services. College Fit Finder is a great website for aggregating all information onto a single website. That said, the responsibility and ultimate outcome of being recruited falls onto the player and his family. Yes you can hire someone to do the consulting and some of the leg work but I really have not seen big payoff from using them by anyone I know. Also you need to explore and use the resources available at your club. Some are better than others. This include not just the college program at the club but more importantly, any personal relationships that coaches might have with college coaches.
The reason I set recruiting sites aside is because these coaches are not surfing the web looking for player videos or profiles. There are waaaaay more players contacting them than they can recruit. About the only thing these service website do, is to get your kid onto their fund raiser ID camp emails. No serious recruiting. Of course soon as I say this, someone will most likely rebuff this statement with exception but for the most part, really, that's all they do...
Coaches take interest in players that take interest in them. Have your kid contact the coaches (subject line should have simple purpose and graduation year. e.g., Class of 2023 Playing at Surf Man City Cup this Memorial Wknd). Expect email to be read on smartphone so keep the message simple and short. Grad year, GPA, position playing, Team and schedule of games)
Don't forget to register at the NCAA Eligibility Center website and take SAT/ACT earlier than later. College coaches must meet minimum requirement specified by the institution that they coach at, above and beyond NCAA rules.
As time goes by, check back to this forum (and others) and post more questions but for now this should give you some sense of what needs to happen over the next 6 to 9 months.
For reference, my son was recruited by 4 schools and he is in his 2nd year. His SAT was 1420 and ACT was 33. Subject SAT 800 Math, 760 Physics. I bring this up because it was his grades that caught coaches eyes above and beyond field play. In other words, all things being similar, coaches want players with higher scores to offset lower scores on the team. If your kid is interested in high academic school, most of them have composite/average team scores they must meet.