In today’s online world, getting a business’s website right is becoming increasingly more important, regardless of the company’s size. If you’re creating a new site or want to improve your current one, you’ll need to carry out various search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. SEO helps websites rank better in different search engines, which can lead to more traffic, and ultimately more customers or conversions.
But how do you ensure that your website has the best SEO it can? One way would be to hire an SEO consultant; but what is an SEO consultant and what benefits can they bring your business? In this article, we answer all these questions, so that once you have your website up and running and you’re ready to do some SEO on it, you’ll know what you’re looking for in a hire.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When a website carries out type of digital marketing, the goal is to be found easier on search engines like Google, driving more qualified traffic to their site.
There are many different aspects when it comes to SEO. For a web page to rank well in the search results, it needs to best match a user’s search intent through specifically placed keywords, proper heading structures, and an overall good user experience on a trusted site.
These are all things that a search engine looks for when deciding where each page will fall within it’s rankings. The ultimate goal of a search engine is to provide it’s users with what it believes to be the most relevant and accurate information to their search query.
What Is SEO Consulting?
An SEO consultant will run an audit on your website to see how well it’s running. The audit will look at the site’s visibility on search engines, it’s speed, and the prevalence of relevant keywords, amongst many other things. An SEO consultant will then develop a strategy to improve the overall SEO performance of the site. In that way, SEO consulting should be seen as an investment, because an optimized website is far more likely to increase a company’s income.
A website can be seen as the shop window of a business. It doesn’t matter what that business sells – whether it is a service, product, or information – the key is to attract a larger audience. To draw a larger audience, you need to improve your organic search, which requires improved SEO. SEO consulting is a means of increasing your organic search rate, which can translate to increased sales, and greater profit.
Finding An SEO Consultant
Given the importance of SEO, it is essential to know how to find a good SEO consultant. You can find an SEO consultant through many means – the suitability of which depends on your circumstances. It could be that your business is large enough that an SEO consultant actively pursues your business. Or it could be that your business is of a size that you only need a freelance SEO consultant for a short time, so using a freelancer website may be a good option. Freelancer websites will often have past ratings and reviews by previous clients, so you can find out if the quality of their work is of a high enough standard for your requirements.
Outsourcing in this way can help a company ensure the long-term success rate of its website. For, what many people forget is that SEO is an ongoing process.
The Difference Between An SEO Consultant And SEO Manager
As SEO is an ongoing process, companies might want to hire an SEO manager. But what is an SEO manager, and how does that differ from an SEO consultant? An SEO manager is an in-house employee whose job is to check that all aspects of a website are running at a level they should be, so that all content is optimized for search engines.
SEO managers can be a good option for a firm with a large marketing budget, or where a large part of their income comes from a company’s website. An SEO manager can ensure that a company’s website is consistently running checks to optimize its SEO.
But you may decide your SEO is already quite good, and you’d just like to have someone come and look over things one in a while. In that case an SEO consultant may be the better choice.
SEO Consulting: Key Takeaways
With the majority of businesses now having some form of online presence, SEO has become more important than ever before. SEO consulting can be a lucrative business for those who know how to get the results their clients are looking for, but there are many people who claim to be experts, without the data to back that up. So be sure to look at previous client reviews if you’re thinking about hiring an SEO expert, or if you want to become one, make sure to gather testimonials from each client you do work for.