Why Every Business Needs an SEO Consultant
‘Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’ – Confucius.
This saying describes my relationship with the world of SEO. Despite working as a digital journalist and in various sectors of digital marketing to create paid ads and deliver leads and sales through email marketing, nothing seems more fascinating to me than working as an SEO.
Why? Because any digital marketing technique will bring only immediate results, while implementing an SEO strategy can provide results in the long run.
SEO is like gardening. Behind every successful SEO activity, there are moments of soil preparation, sowing, pruning and continuous care.
Now let’s move on to what an SEO consultant does and how hiring an SEO consultant can help you boost your sales.
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Why you should hire an SEO Consultant
Do you want to drive traffic to your website? Search Engine Optimisation is the best way to do so. It is a strategy developed specifically to not only improve the site’s ranking on search engines, but also refine the quality and quantity of traffic arriving on a website.
An SEO Consultant can’t promise you the leading place on a Google search results, since the formula is unknown, just like the recipe of Coca Cola. If anyone claims to make your website dominate on Google, don’t trust them!
After all, Google recommends companies to hire SEO Consultants for better optimisation of their websites. Here comes the SEO Consultant into play!
What does an SEO Consultant do?
An SEO Consultant is here to make your life easier. They are responsible for increasing the visits to a website through organic search, which only happens when they implement a set of on-page, off-page and technical SEO strategies.
What is the point of spending money and time on a website if you are not going to be found in a Google SERP and ultimately not increasing your business profit? Here are the services that, according to Google, most SEO experts and agencies tend to provide:
- Review of your site content or structure
- Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript
- Content development
- Management of online business development campaigns
- Keyword research
- SEO training
- Expertise in specific markets and geographies
Do SEO Specialists need to know coding?
No, not necessarily coding will make you a great SEO professional. However, through knowledge of third-party software like SEMrush, Ahrefs or Screaming Frog, SEO experts should know how to team up with web developers to point them in the right direction if a critical issue pops in.
Should an SEO Expert also write content?
Likewise, an SEO professional doesn’t have to be an expert in writing content for the website. Usually, companies hire professional copywriters and let SEO experts devise the strategy (e.g. Content Calendar, H1s, Meta Data, Internal/External linking, etc.).
In short, the role is to ensure that the best practices from an SEO standpoint are applied to content.
How to find a good SEO Consultant?
A good SEO expert should impact business revenue by improving the website’s ranking in relevant search results.
In what ways can a SEO expert make sure their opinions are respected and taken into consideration? Through communication.
Building up a relationship of trust with either internal or external stakeholders is important so that they can add value for the company’s benefit.
Having poor communication and interpersonal skills is a disadvantage in any work – SEO is no exception.
When to rely on a SEO Consultant?
The number one priority of every business should always be to optimise their positioning on search engines to boost searchability and visibility to become the real answer to the questions of their potential customers.
It may be the case of a small business operating locally or a multinational company spread across different countries. It may also be the case of e-commerce companies selling products or providing services online: no business can survive without SEO.
However, understanding when is the right moment for a business to hire an SEO expert is essential.
According to Hubspot’s state of marketing report, 75% of marketers find SEO extremely effective or very effective in taking their brand to the next level.
Still, decision makers often find it hard to invest heavily in this arena, as SEO can take a longer time to start generating significant results than other digital marketing tactics.
Similarly, according to MarketHire, if six months have passed and your SEO strategy has not brought in customers and organic results, it’s time to hand over this aspect to an SEO professional.
How long do SEO results take?
Estimate confirmed by SEMrush suggests that any business investing in SEO can expect to see results in 6 to 12 months. This timeframe should be enough to measure the impact of any SEO efforts on the business’ KPIs (e.g. growth in non-branded organic traffic, conversions, leads, etc).
How to Become an SEO
As a Senior SEO Manager, I am going to provide you with some basic tips that might help you start your journey as an SEO specialist.
In my opinion, you should not worry about getting a degree to become an SEO expert.
A degree is needed as far as you are talking about professions like Medicine, Engineering, Science, etc. However, there are many professions where you can climb the ladder of success without necessarily having a degree.
There is no doubt in the fact that having an education and a degree in subjects like Digital Marketing, does make you familiar with the profession from a theoretical aspect.
As such, it is important to point out that the theoretical knowledge related to any subject keeps on changing due to the introduction of new tools, methods, techniques, and evolution of the subject.
So, my first recommendation is to get professional guidance by following an advanced course that includes recent case studies. This way, you learn things that you can apply to your own websites or blogs.
Then, try to gain experience in the field by applying for a digital agency. You will naturally improve your problem-solving skills and boost your expertise, as marketing agencies tend to have fast-paced environments. After all, developing strategies and managing campaigns for one client after another is very similar to be part of an assembly line!
SEO Resources
Do you know what is the best way to stay up to date on the most trending and latest SEO news? It’s Twitter. I am not just talking about tweets of people working at Google, like John Muller, but also plenty of case studies and tests are discussed on Twitter on a daily basis. Don’t miss out!
Aleyda Solís, an international SEO consultant born in Nicaragua who lives in Spain, sends out a weekly newsletter where she collects the most trending information related to the SEO world.
The Search Engine Journal newsletters is also extremely recommended. So are Kristina Azarenko’s SEO Chrome Extensions and checklists, which help to instantly see the top SEO metrics on a click. Kristina was born in Belarus and has been working as an SEO Consultant in Canada for years now.
In addition, you can almost blindly follow every publication on Ahrefs’ and SEMrush’ blogs.
And wait, don’t forget the American Digital Entrepreneur, Neil Patel. His team publishes lots of updates and news on SEO best practices.
Should you be approaching this profession, I would recommend the SEO beginner’s guide available on the Hobo’s website.
If you are looking for SEO events and conferences, I have heard extremely good pieces of feedback about the Chiang Mai conference in Thailand, even though it has been canceled in recent years due to Covid-19.
I had the pleasure to attend BrightonSEO a few years ago. This conference provides the world with the most important digital reviews, including interesting talks about SEO, eCommerce and Analytics. The sessions are also available online, however, attending them doesn’t serve the main purpose of the sessions, which is connectivity and networking!
Get in touch with an SEO Consultant
If you wish to invite me to your events or conferences, you just have to fill out a form from the Contact Me section and we can have a direct chat about it. Looking forward to hearing from you!