In the current digital environment, having a good online presence is now essential rather than optional. The secret to more website traffic, brand recognition, and eventually sales is search engine optimization or SEO. But it might be challenging to navigate the constantly changing SEO landscape. This is where hiring an experienced search engine optimization consultant comes into play. That is the reliable person who can help you create a successful plan to raise your website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).
It is not easy to find the ideal SEO consultant, though. There are a lot of options available, so it’s important to explore deliberately to find the one that best suits your needs and budget. This comprehensive guide will help you navigate the Search Engine Optimization Consultant hiring process with confidence.
Who is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Consultant?
A Search engine optimization (SEO) Consultant is a person who is responsible for increasing the brand’s rankings in search engines, by optimizing their website and content that attracts the target audience via online searches. They are experts in creating SEO strategies to improve website visibility, which helps drive a huge volume of traffic to their website.
They are well aware of the workings and updates of search engine algorithms and examine how well their search results are performing. They have all the expertise in keyword research, planning, executions, monitoring, and improving SEO campaigns.
These search engine optimization consultants are connected with the companies as SEO specialists. You can also find them on various freelance platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer, etc. Some work with in-house marketing teams and provide SEO services collectively.
Read Also: Proven Benefits Of SEO For Businesses
Responsibilities of SEO Consultant
SEO consultants follow a variety of techniques to help a brand’s website gain a huge volume of organic traffic by increasing search engine rankings. These activities include keyword research, website audit, competitive analysis, etc. Some of the major activities are explained below:
1. Keyword Research
It is an essential task to develop an effective content strategy during the planning process. It helps in increasing the website rankings according to the keywords, and phrases that users use in their search terms. It also allows you to gain information related to the target audience and search behavior. It provides a wide range of metrics, like the search volume of a specific word, the competition of that keyword, click-through rate, and traffic volume generated via a specific search, etc.
2. Website Audit
In this activity, they analyze the whole website according to the aspect of SEO, and develop numerous recommendations on how to improve. They also analyze web pages, content, meta descriptions, and other metrics that are considered in SE rankings. The main purpose of a website SEO audit is to evaluate whether the website shows up to search engine users when the search is relevant to the content.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is a term used to boost the overall structure of the website, which results in easy indexing to search engines. These tasks include acquiring SSL certification, developing the website to look mobile-friendly, improving the sitemap, making website’s folders structured, and enhancing the website’s loading speed.
Technical SEO has a lot of importance due to these factors, and it is very helpful in increasing the website’s overall rankings. It also includes more tasks like maintaining robots.txt files, improving broken links, eliminating additional content, and well-structured data in the website.
Best Practices To Hire Search Engine Optimization Consultant
Here are the key factors you need to consider while hiring the best SEO consultant for your business.
1- Determine Your Objective And Budget
Before searching for a good consultant, companies need to determine what services are required from their SEO consultant, and what are the objectives of the brand to hire them. They need to be specific in assigning the tasks to that consultant. They also need to set a particular budget for their SEO consultants, according to their financial conditions.
2- Generate A Shortlist Of Top SEO Consultants
You can search for SEO consultants on social media platforms like Linkedin and freelancing websites like Fiverr or determine numerous SEO specialists and agencies that provide related services. Observe them based on experience, previous work, and client reviews. You can also find experts by participating in SEO communities and groups on social media platforms related to SEO services.
3- Conduct Interviews
In this phase, you need to interview shortlisted search engine optimization consultants and evaluate their skills according to your business objectives. You can test them by asking the tools that are used in developing multiple SEO strategies. The most effective questions are:
- How do you monitor SEO campaigns and understand how successful this campaign is?
- Is there a list of previous projects that you have worked on and achieved remarkable results?
- How do you examine current SEO trends and Google algorithm updates?
4- Ask For A Website Inspection
You can request a shortlisted SEO consultant to conduct an audit of your website to evaluate their SEO skills. This will provide you with enough information about the expertise of a potential SEO consultant. The audit must be upon both on-page and off-page SEO factors.
5- Give Priority To Effective Communicators
You need to prefer candidates who possess effective communication skills. They must be capable of adapting numerous SEO strategies according to every situation that they encounter. They must possess all the expertise that a professional SEO consultant has. Frequent communication with the SEO consultant will be required to establish an effective SEO campaign and make sure that you invested in the right person who is capable of meeting the required results.
Conclusion
It is highly effective for companies to hire a perfect search engine optimization consultant for them. It helps them to gain more organic traffic, increase their brand’s reputation, and improve their search engine rankings. By implementing these steps while hiring SEO consultants, you can successfully evaluate that person’s skills, and it will be easy to monitor his performance and expertise.
If you need SEO consultancy for your brand or company, we are here to help! Drop us a quick line, and one of the experts at WebTech Solutions will reach you for assistance.
