An SEO consultant is a professional who provides various services that follow best SEO practices. These SEO consulting services can improve your page rank on Google’s search engine results page or SERP. The higher your page ranks, the more visible it is to people using the search engine. SEO can significantly increase the amount of online traffic going to your website. This is the first step towards improving revenues earned through your website.
What Does an SEO Consultant Do for Clients?
Search engine optimization benefits clients by increasing the visibility of their business website to online customers. The SEO consultant uses various tools and skills to improve the site’s ranking. There are many ways to accomplish this goal, and the correct method may depend on the nature of the client’s business, the client’s objectives, long-term growth strategy, key marketing message, and other factors.
The SEO consultant might use the following methods to improve the client’s visibility online and improve the site’s ranking on the SERP:
Keyword analysis: Website owners may hire an SEO consultant to write content rich in keywords, which is a good SEO strategy; however, this alone will not guarantee keyword optimization. Professional SEO consultants can review your website keyword strategy and generate a list of high-performing keywords to be rewritten into existing content. Keywords that worked in the past might need to be updated to get the same results. This enhancement can dramatically improve the site’s ranking on the Google search engine results page.
On-page SEO: This term refers to the content portion of the website. On-page SEO is measured in terms of the current industry standards, which may change periodically. Every website has a backend process that includes metadata, tagging, page load speed, and site security. These aspects of the website might need some improvement to optimize the on-page SEO. The SEO consultant can analyze these technical issues and craft a plan to make relevant improvements and updates.
Off-page SEO: Refers to the strategies and tactics used to improve a website’s visibility and search engine rankings through activities and promotions that take place outside of the website. Examples of off-page SEO include link building, social media promotion, and online reputation management. The goal of off-page SEO campaigns is to increase the number of high-quality backlinks pointing to a website and improve the website’s visibility and credibility in the eyes of search engines and users.
Technical SEO: Refers to optimizing a website’s technical infrastructure to improve its visibility and search engine rankings. This includes a wide range of tasks, such as ensuring that the website can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines, optimizing the website’s structure and code, and improving the website’s loading speed.
Some common examples of technical SEO include:
- Optimizing website structure and URLs (user experience)
- Creating an XML sitemap
- Fixing broken HTML, links, and redirects
- Optimizing images and videos
- Making sure the website is mobile-friendly
- Ensuring the website is secure with HTTPS
- Using structured data to help search engines understand the content of the website
- Optimizing website loading speed
- Fixing web development errors
Technical SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and maintenance to ensure that the website complies with search engine guidelines and functions optimally.
Local SEO: This refers to optimizing a website for local search results. This involves optimizing a website to appear at the top of search engine results when people search for keywords related to the business or service in a specific geographic location.
Examples of Local SEO tactics include:
- Creating and verifying a Google My Business listing
- Optimizing the website for location-specific keywords
- Encouraging customers to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, and other review websites.
- Building backlinks from local websites and directories
- Optimizing the website’s title, meta description, and content to include the city, state, and other location-specific information.
- Creating location-specific landing pages
Local SEO aims to increase visibility, drive more targeted traffic to a business’s website, and ultimately increase leads and sales. It is particularly important for small businesses with a physical location as it helps them to connect with customers in their immediate area.
Reports to clients: The SEO consultant will produce information with clear explanations of the site’s ranking, recommended actions, and comprehensive analytics. The bottom line is to produce measurable performance improvements. This process can be done repetitively over time to generate reliable metrics for all actions that produce tangible results. For example, the conversion rate is one of the most popular items on the client report.
How an SEO Consultant Impacts the Business’s Bottom Line
Profitability is known as the bottom line for any business; however, there is a difference between short-term and long-term profits. Short-term profit is easy to understand because it can be linked directly to specific activities. Long-term profit strategies like SEO are better understood as investments. The return on the investment will happen over longer periods of time, but it promises to be more substantial than short-term strategies. The role of the SEO consultant is to convert the idea of SEO as a long-term investment into an actionable plan for the business owner.
Skills an SEO Consultant Must Have
There are many skills the SEO consultant must have to achieve any vision for long-term growth. The SEO consultant should also have the same objectives and vision as the business owner. These long-term goals must guide the outcome of any SEO efforts. This may require a lengthy commitment to the site’s maintenance. This may also involve periodic performance reviews as well. Make sure to choose an SEO consultant with a proven track record of creating a plan for long-term growth and doing the appropriate follow-through work.
Here are some examples of SEO skills that apply to any long-term vision for growth:
General SEO auditing: Analyzes the website’s current rank on the SERP. The site’s strengths and weaknesses are reviewed in this specific context. The audit produces an action plan for improving the site’s performance. This may include content marketing, backlinks, keyword refinement, technical aspects of the backend code, and more.
Inbound/outbound links: Websites gain authority by generating a robust backlink strategy. This includes relevant inbound and outbound links. Inbound links are the more important of the two and are also harder to acquire. The search engine will rank the site’s authoritativeness based on the quality of the inbound links pointing to the site, for example. A good SEO consultant will create a plan for high-competition keywords to be integrated with inbound and outbound links.
Goals of an SEO Consultant
The goal of the SEO consultant is to drive organic traffic to the website, convert the visitor into a paying customer, and lower the bounce rate. This process of driving traffic to the website is called external SEO. The method of keeping the visitor on the page and converting them to a paying customer is called internal SEO. Both external and internal SEO plays a role in achieving the goals of the SEO consultant.
Signs You Need An SEO Consultant
Publishing a website is a big step for many business owners, but it might be surprising that this will not guarantee leads or converted visitors from organic search results. Generating leads for a website might seem like a natural process unless you understand all the backend work involved. It would be best if you had a specific plan that addresses your company’s needs.
Executing the plan and measuring results are critical aspects of any good SEO planning process. Any marketing plan for the Web must deal with search engines and the Google algorithm that rank the pages. The SEO consultant becomes invaluable for improving the site’s rankings on Google’s SERP. Any successful digital marketing strategy should be capable of remedying the signs in the list below.
Here are the key signs that your website needs help from a professional SEO consultant:
Dropoff of website traffic: Search engine traffic communicates the degree of success or failure of any SEO content strategy. Over time, the traffic might dwindle or stop altogether. This is a sign that your current SEO strategy is outdated.
Penalties by search engines: Google and other search engines rank pages according to quality standards. Too many penalties can drive the website into obscurity. This can be difficult to avoid without professional SEO help. The SEO consultant understands how to meet the search engine’s requirements so that your website can avoid penalties by following the webmaster guidelines set by Google.
In-house SEO is failing: Building a compliant website is more complicated than it looks, and many steps are involved. In-house SEO team members often have other responsibilities, which distract their attention away from performing this function according to the best practices for the Web. The professional SEO specialist offers know-how and insider knowledge that most in-house SEO teams lack. The trade-off is the extra cost of hiring a specialized professional SEO consultant.
Lack of time: Many SEO strategies fail to perform simply because there is not enough time to do everything right. This is a common problem for small business owners who try to do SEO for their business websites. The result of mistakes is a lower page ranking on the Google SERP, low traffic numbers, and penalties for page errors.
Finding a Good SEO Consultant
Experience makes all the difference in the world of SEO. Before hiring your SEO professional, check for references, work history, and proven results. Avoid hiring people who cannot provide evidence to back up any claims of success. Proving results can be done in a variety of ways. Page rankings and traffic analytics should be made available, and former customers should be able to attest to the impact of hiring an SEO consultant.
Never hesitate to ask for testimonials, references, case studies, and proof of the consultant’s capacity to get results. Start networking with others in your industry to see if anyone can refer you to a good SEO consultant. You can also search Google to find someone capable of getting ranked in the top spot (first page) on the SERP. However, a good reference from a trusted source is a more reliable method.
SEO Consultants vs. SEO Agencies
There is always the option of working with an SEO agency instead of an SEO consultant. A consultant is often a freelancer or self-employed professional. An agency can have anywhere from a few employees to a few hundred people. Agencies can leverage their size to offer more services with greater specialization from each employee, but the trade-off is the added cost.
SEO Consultants May Require Your Help, SEO Agencies Won’t
Business owners often hire SEO consultants to provide tailored services to address the website’s specific problem areas. However, the SEO consultant is just a single person, so more interaction with the client is required. You might need to perform some of the work instead of hiring an SEO agency to do everything for you.
Agencies Cost More, But You Get More For Your Money
The cost-to-benefit analysis is different for each organization seeking the services of an SEO consultant or agency. The agency is more expensive, but they can pay their experts on staff to add value to any project. This includes performing high-quality work faster than a single SEO consultant can accomplish, for example.
Both Agencies and Consultants Offer Great Advice
Advice from agencies or consultants is invaluable in driving traffic, increasing conversions, and lowering bounce rates. This requires keyword-rich content containing relevant and engaging information. Visitors search Google using keywords and phrases that lead them to your website’s landing page. Once this happens, the original SEO objective shifts. Now that the visitor found your website’s landing page, the new task is to convince the visitor to make a purchase. This process is called the sales funnel.
The sales funnel a form of on-page SEO. Once the purchase is made, the visitor is converted into a paying customer. The visitor must find a reason to stay on the page to convert, so the content must speak to the reader’s pain points within seconds. If they leave the page, this is called a bounce rate. Work with a qualified SEO consultant or agency to achieve your goals.
Why Choose Isaac, Roles, and Responsibilities of an SEO Consultant
Optimize your SEO strategy by hiring Isaac, a leading SEO expert. He has a proven track record of outstanding keyword research, link building, and adhering to best practices. He can demonstrate a history of success with Google analytics, and his years of experience are well-documented.
Isaac is an exceptional SEO consultant who can customize a plan of action for your business website. He utilizes the most powerful SEO tools, including SEO audits, to realize your goal of driving traffic to your website. Once there, his work helps convert visitors into customers while reducing the bounce rate. Over half of all online customers will use Google (and Bing) before finalizing their purchase, so maximize your online presence by contacting Isaac by email today.