Getting your business noticed online is a perennial challenge. The moment you think you’ve found a winning formula, some new change to Google’s algorithm comes along and you feel like you’re back to square one.
Fortunately, SEO Consultants can help. These professionals perform audits of your existing search engine optimization strategies, fix technical issues with your current approach, widen your keyword research and, occasionally, help directly with building backlinks.
How To Find A Good SEO Consultant In 2021 Share on X
The benefits of hiring a great organic search consultant are clear: more relevant traffic, greater authority and more free time for you and your colleagues. But finding a professional who can actually meet your needs is a challenge. There are so many options out there, how do you know who to choose?
Take a look at the following advice for hiring a great SEO consultant in 2021:
Ask Your Team What You Need
Before you look for a good SEO consultant online, ask your team about the kind of professional they need.
You’ll often find that your tribe knows the holes in your approach to SEO and already has some good ideas for how to plug them.
Collect Recommendations
Once you know the type of skills you need, the next step is to find an SEO consultant who comes highly recommended.
Here are some of the places you can look for a great SEO consultant in 2021:
- Current staff: In many cases, your colleagues will already have quality SEO professionals in their network. Ask them to recommend people they believe offer high-quality services
- Online reviews: If you can’t find anybody in your immediate network, start branching out and looking online. Google and other search engines now post company reviews, so you can get a sense of the kind of quality that you can expect if the consultant comes via a third-party firm. Choose a consultant with a high review score who can also meet the needs of your firm.
- Directories: Directories are another place you can look for SEO consultancy services. These sites typically provide more information than simple reviews on the kind of SEO services you can expect to receive, allowing you to cross-reference with reviews.
Interview The SEO Consultant
SEO consultants can make or break your business, so it pays to interview them first, as you would any other employee or contractor.
Ask them about:
- Their experience with SEO, including how long they’ve been practising
- Examples of clients who they have helped successfully in the past, including metrics that prove their performance
- Their specific areas of expertise to ensure that they match up with your current business needs
- The way they like to communicate with their clients, including whether they are willing to hold face-to-face chats or prefer to send you monthly updates via email
- The type of SEO tools that they use to ensure that their practices are up to date and that they are using search engine-approved methods
- Detailed case studies from their past clients, including contact details for references
- Their experience working with companies like yours in the past – not all firms have the same SEO requirements
- The frequency with which they send updates and reports on progress
- Their rates and whether there are any additional charges you can expect aside from those the SEO consultant is asking for directly. Remember, the higher the rate, the greater the engagement.
Find Out More About Their Traits
Most excellent SEO consultants have certain characteristics that make them ideal when it comes to helping you get noticed online.
Quality consultants in 2021, for instance, have largely abandoned the old “off-the-shelf” model of SEO consultancy. Instead, the goal now is to empower clients to take control of their own search engine optimisation processes themselves by teaching them the essentials they need.
Thus, modern SEO consultants should have the attitude of a teacher. They should be interested in how you’re conducting your SEO right now and be willing to educate your team on how to improve it.
Great SEO consultants should also be down to Earth about the kind of results that you can expect. While hiring consulting services is helpful, they won’t produce miracles. Boosting your website’s ranking online will still take a lot of time, effort and resources.
You should also get the sense as you’re talking to your SEO consultant they know what will work for your business. Experienced people don’t just say what they’re going to do and leave it at that. They also draw on their professional experience to tell you what probably won’t work in your situation as well. Regardless, SEO is a long-term investment. Consultants can show you the way, but ultimately strategy and hard-work are what will get the job done.
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General FAQs
You can try to go it alone, but it’s worth it to improve your revenue through better SEO. SEO experts help drive more traffic to your website by improving your search engine ranking. Prospective buyers are more likely to click on links that appear on the first page of search engine results.
The most common hourly rate for SEO agencies is $100-$150/hour. For SEO consultants it’s $75-$100/hour, and for freelancers, it’s $41–50/hour.
SEO Consultants are responsible for planning, implementing and managing company clients’s overall SEO strategy. They usually cover a wide variety of duties such as web marketing, web analytics, content strategy planing, link building, and keyword strategy.
