How to Hire an SEO Consultant Effectively
Hiring an SEO consultant for your online marketing strategy can be very useful to position your website in the top positions of the search results pages of Google, Bing, or other search engines. A well-positioned website will help you increase your sales dramatically, get more business leads and give you more brand awareness.
Appearing first in the search results of Google or other search engines is essential to achieve a high amount of consistent traffic over several years. This is why hiring an SEO expert is so effective at driving more traffic and sales.
In this article, we will explain what an SEO consultant is and how to hire the best one for your business. Hopefully, by the end of the article, you will have a much better idea of the importance of this role.
What is an SEO consultant?
An SEO consultant is an expert in web optimization, both in the recommendations and in the implementation of tools and strategies aimed at positioning your website high in SERPs.
The functions of the consultant that you hire must be totally focused on achieving a single objective: That your page appears in the first results to drive more traffic and, in turn, more sales.
In other words, SEO is key in your digital marketing strategies. It is as important as your social media strategy and you have to pay attention to it.
What are the functions of an SEO consultant?
Statistical analysis of your website:
This is achieved thanks to the use of tools such as Google Analytics or other programs that allow you to see the current traffic on your website. Visitors can be reviewed by country, region, gender, age range, interests, etc. All this, visible through lines or time ranges. This allows you to make tactical and strategic decisions.
- Advice for optimizing your website
This refers to the changes necessary to make your website load quickly, be seen on any device and be easy to navigate, as well as pleasing to the eye.
The quality of the images used and the readability of the site play an important role here.
In other words, the images must be of good quality, but not too big. They should still be able to look good from a mobile phone or from a PC or desktop computer.
Also, the paragraphs and sentences in your content should be short and easy to read. Here, the SEO consultant might even recommend outsourcing a content writer for your blog. So that a writing expert is in charge of the form, as well as the inclusion of keywords that the consultant recommends after their analysis.
- Keyword research
As already mentioned, the SEO consultant is in charge of auditing the data of your site to find which keywords you are missing from your site. The aim of this is to allow your website to rank for more keywords.
- On-page SEO
This refers to organizing the content of your website or blog to allow it to be indexed as well as optimizing the URLs, titles and content to include the targeted keywords. Internal linking might also be an important feature that you are missing from your website. Another important point is that you must know how to analyze the content of your competitors and be able to offer superior content.
- Link building (or Off-page SEO)
An SEO consultant will also have knowledge of techniques for obtaining and conducting an analysis of sites that have content linked to your website.
This helps your site have a better search engine ranking by serving as a reference on other sites, giving your website or blog more authority in Google’s eyes.
- Local SEO
Local SEO is becoming increasingly important in recent times. An SEO consultant will help your company rank for local keywords and in local maps and services such as Google Maps.
We have recently seen an increase in consultants specializing in local efforts as it provides effective relevant traffic such as this SEO consultant in London.
- Four key components to a good SEO consultant
Now that we have seen what an SEO consultant does and what the basic knowledge required is, here is a list of what your consultant needs to be competent in:
- Technical knowledge and experience
- References from other clients
- Know all the necessary areas and tools
- Can build trust with you and your team
Key questions to ask consultants before hiring
How and how often will the communication take place: Remember that they must be in constant communication. Any major changes to the site should be discussed with you first before approval.
How often will a comparative statistics report be delivered to you: They should periodically report the changes and statistics shown by the tools implemented. It can be weekly, monthly, even quarterly. Agree on the frequency of this.
What are the goals of the website: The consultant must offer you a concrete plan for SEO audits and the future position of your sites, how long of a time frame they need to complete this work. SEO is progressive and so all goals should follow with this line of thinking. Every month goals should be analyzed and realized.
In summary
As you can see, the work of an SEO consultant can be extremely helpful and powerful for ranking your website. Finding a good SEO expert to hire is something you shouldn't take lightly. You must be knowledgeable of some of the technical aspects of search engine optimization so you know what you are getting!
