How to Find Select and Hire the Right SEO Consultant?

SEO should be a part of every business that could benefit from having an online presence, which applies for all businesses these days. It is true that every business owner ought to become familiar with the fundamentals of SEO and the benefits it provides to businesses. However, mastering SEO takes time and extensive hands-on experience. Finding the right people to assist you in scaling your campaigns and developing comprehensive marketing strategies are the best uses of your time. In the case of SEO, you require an outsider with experience. Opportunities that would have been seen by an expert outsider are missed when you are too close to your business.

Working with an expert SEO consultant who is familiar with your business, your target market, and digital marketing can help you accomplish a great deal more. Finding someone who is a good match for the marketing objectives of your company is therefore the best step. So, how do you find the best SEO consultant for your business? This post will answer all your questions regarding how to find and hire an SEO consultant, no matter the size of your business.

Who is an SEO Consultant?

An SEO consultant provides dedicated SEO services that aid businesses in elevating their websites’ positions in search engine results. The objective of an SEO consultant is to increase your business’s revenue potential, assist you in remaining competitive in your sector, and make it simpler for potential customers to locate you. An SEO consultant will give a monthly report to clients. The consultant’s work, current rankings, and any subsequent enhancements will all be covered in the report. Depending on the company for which a consultant works, their responsibilities can vary. The scope of SEO consulting services can range from performing specific SEO tasks to providing strategic advice to businesses.  Some of the things an SEO consultant might do for you include,

• Create a content strategy for SEO
• Analyze the competition on the websites that rank for your target keywords
• Enhance the content of the website
• Further develop site route and page association
• Do research on keywords
• Recommend enhancements to the call to action
• Fix issues with technical SEO
• Collaborate with other marketing teams to distribute content via email campaigns and social media

An SEO consultant should have the following abilities and credentials,

• Make SEO strategies and solutions that best suit your company’s requirements
• Predict how a SEO campaign will perform
• Give examples of the outcomes they’ve achieved for other customers
• Make use of the most recent SEO methods, tools, and software
• Produce original content that appears first in search results
• Make recommendations for SEO by analyzing the data

How to Find an SEO Consultant?

There are a few primary methods for finding an SEO consultant. You should anticipate performing your due diligence during this discovery stage, even though they all require some effort. We recommend the following five methods for finding an SEO consultant:

• Inquire about recommendations from people in your professional network. Your trusted circle is your network. Look in your network for SEO consultants who have worked with other marketing professionals or owners of businesses and made at least a few recommendations. Start with your social media accounts, particularly Twitter and LinkedIn. We recommend sending private messages to people in your network who have worked with an SEO consultant and asking for recommendations via social media posts.
• Look for lists of SEO consultants with the highest ratings. Credo.com, Upcity, Thumbtack, Clutch, and other similar websites can assist you in locating reputable SEO consultants in a specific field or niche.
• Check out third-party reviews of the best SEO consultants. For instance, PageTraffic is listed on Clutch and other websites, has reviews on Google, and so on. Customers’ reviews can be viewed by business owners or executives in marketing. Examine the kinds of clients that particular SEO consultants have served, the kind of work that has been completed, and the outcomes that have been achieved.
• Meet SEO consultants by attending MeetUps and networking events in your area. Meeting with SEO consultants face-to-face can help you find the right person to work with your team and achieve your company’s objectives.
• Review SEO blogs to find consultants who understand your niche. Reading what professional SEO consultants write about can help you find a good match based on the kind of work you want done, even if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. You can look through a comprehensive list of recent SEO blog post headlines on AllTop to find blog post topics that relate to the kind of work you want done.

Pay attention to the fact that we do not include the specific advice “Do a Google search.” This is because a good SEO consultant may not always come from a high Google ranking. Due to their busy schedules with their clients’ SEO campaigns, a surprising number of high-quality SEO consultants do not rank first for their target keyword phrases. Although this should not be one of your top criteria, you will undoubtedly find some excellent SEO consultants ranking highly.

What Does an SEO Consultant Do?

An SEO Consultant does much more than you may know about. A glimpse of the work that an expert SEO consultant does is provided in the following list.

• An SEO Consultant should review your site and give recommendations for optimization. An SEO consultant can audit your website in a variety of ways. The following are some important audit and strategy types that you should be familiar with:
  • SEO Content Audit: This kind of audit can help you improve and refine the content that search engines have indexed on your website by making suggestions like trimming, consolidating, and other changes to the content. Some of your most popular pages should also have researched keywords included in this kind of audit.
  • Technical SEO Audit: This type of audit may include suggestions for resolving rendering issues, optimizing your robots.txt file and XML sitemap, implementing redirects, and other technical SEO best practices.

Also Read: How to Perform an Effective SEO Audit in 2024: A Checklist

• A content strategy (based on keyword research) is provided by an SEO consultant. Your business will have a plan in place to produce the content that your target audience is looking for if you have a content strategy. However, a good content strategy should include content strategies that work for your industry and type of business (lead generation, eCommerce, publishing, etc.) in addition to keyword research.
• Assistance with on-page optimization is provided by an SEO consultant. This one is very important because good on-page SEO is important for making sure your website can rank well for the researched keywords. On occasion, an SEO consultant may actually carry out your company’s on-page SEO. Your staff’s bandwidth, your comfort level with giving your SEO consultant administrative access to your website, and other factors will all influence the implementation strategy.
• An SEO consultant identifies opportunities for link building. Be cautious with this one, since some unacceptable kinds of links can seriously endanger you of Google’s algorithm updates. Avoid SEO consultants who only focus on directory links, guarantee a certain number of links per month, and place too much emphasis on anchor text. Some topically related websites and blogs that link to competitors but not to your website can be found with the assistance of a competent SEO consultant. A reputable SEO consultant will also assist you in locating contributor (guest posting) opportunities on topically related, industry-leading websites, where you can establish your brand by providing insightful and expert content. Find additional methods for building links that SEO consultants can assist you with.
• An SEO consultant assists you in setting up analytics. The majority of businesses already have Google Analytics installed, but not every website has Bing Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console set up. Additional reporting metrics can be provided by paid SEO tools like Moz Pro, SEMRush, and others. These metrics can help you and your SEO consultant keep track of traffic, errors, acquired links, keyword rankings, and content opportunities.
• The outcomes of an SEO consultant’s efforts can be gauged by looking at specific metrics in their reports. The majority of businesses are initially concerned with keyword rankings, but a good SEO consultant will concentrate on the bigger picture. The most important metrics to track are the expansion of lead and revenue from organic search. After you have begun consistently implementing the SEO consultant’s recommendations, you should look for the first indications that these metrics are growing within a period of three to six months (maybe even longer). It will likely grow slowly at first, but it will grow steadily over time. SEO is a process that takes time.

Also Read: Top 10 Rank Tracking Tools for 2024

How to Hire an SEO consultant?

Hiring an SEO consultant can be tricky. You must be engaged during the proposition cycle, know what to search for and pose the right inquiries. You are more likely to select the right SEO consultant for your business the more educated you are. Let’s take a look at a few important considerations.

What Makes a Good SEO Consultant?

A good SEO consultant will work hard to become as ingrained in your company as possible. Only by doing so will they be able to find a wide range of opportunities for your company to increase organic search traffic, leads, and/or sales. The following credits are indications of a good SEO consultant.

• A reputable SEO consultant is aware of your revenue and traffic objectives. It will be difficult for both you and the SEO consultant to measure success if you do not know these objectives. Occasionally, the initial objective is simply to “start growing.” That’s fine at first, but it’s good to set specific goals once momentum has been gained. Take into consideration Hubspot’s S.M.A.R.T. goal methodology.
• A good SEO consultant will capitalize on your distinctive value proposition. The SEO consultant can differentiate between various keywords, optimize your metadata with CTAs, make use of your assets, and offer suggestions for making your content more compelling and in line with your company’s unique offering if they know what sets your business apart.
• You and your staff can learn about SEO best practices from a good SEO consultant. Understanding your SEO consultant’s recommendations is critical for both you and your staff. A good SEO consultant will, whenever it is possible, provide links to documentation that backs up recommendations and cite case studies that demonstrate why particular strategies work (and are generally accepted as “safe” strategies).
• A reputable SEO consultant will disclose your ranking potential honestly. It’s simply not possible for many businesses to rank competitively for the most searched-for keywords due to a lack of link profile authority. A good SEO consultant will tell you the truth and help you find less competitive keyword phrases for which your business can compete. The most important thing here is that your SEO consultant helps you target the keywords that are most relevant to your business and that can rank well.
• A reputable SEO consultant will be transparent about the time it will take to see results. SEO requires time. A website’s organic search traffic growth can take anywhere from three to six months, or even nine months. This depends on your link profile authority, your content quantity and quality, the competition in your industry, your current technical issues, and other factors. Any consultant who claims you can achieve high rankings quickly should be avoided. SEO is not a sprint; it is a marathon.

Questions to Ask an SEO Consultant

Now that you know what makes a good SEO consultant, it’s important to know what to ask them before getting a proposal. Take note of specific case studies that support an SEO consultant’s claims, as well as specific details about the various SEO processes that will be carried out during your relationship. Here are some particular inquiries to make.

• “Do you have any clients who are at odds with my company?” This is a question that most business owners and executives in marketing overlook. Since you don’t want to get into a situation where you have a conflict of interest with any of your clients, you should always make it a point to mention if you have a current client who might cause a conflict.
• “How long will it take for results to appear?” You must be aware, as previously stated, that SEO takes time. If an SEO consultant begins discussing results within the first month or two, he or she should have a very specific explanation. We have found that it typically takes at least a few months to see a noticeable increase in organic search traffic. Furthermore, this is only possible if your business promptly implements the provided suggestions and recommendations.
• “Can you promise rankings?” You should end the conversation if a consultant promises specific rankings. It should not be common for consultants to promise specific search engine rankings, but if they do, it should make your stomach drop. The search engines are out of our hands, and their algorithms are constantly evolving. Rankings cannot be guaranteed by us.
• “What kinds of software and procedures do you use?” This is more important than you might think because you want to know upfront whether a potential SEO consultant will use particular working methods, applications, or communication styles if you have any aversion to them. Make sure that the procedures and applications are easy for you to use and comfortable for your staff.
• “What areas of SEO do you concentrate on?” In an ideal world, you want an SEO consultant who can handle all of your SEO needs: specialized, content, content improvement, content showcasing direction, and so on. For instance, if a consultant says that his or her primary focus is on building links, this should cause some concern because SEO is more about building links. In fact, many SEO campaigns can produce impressive outcomes with no specific outreach efforts for link building.

How to Hire an SEO Consultant?

The final step in the selection process is to hire an SEO consultant. Determine the following once you have selected an SEO consultant with whom you would like to collaborate:

• Do you need an initial review/procedure or do you need a continuous relationship? The beginning of your relationship will be established by determining this. An initial SEO audit and ideally, an accompanying SEO strategy may be beneficial if you want to ease into the relationship at times. In other instances, a monthly ongoing arrangement may be required to carry out an audit, develop a strategy, prepare your staff, and put the initial recommendations into action. In this instance, a relationship of ongoing consulting is recommended.
• How long does an ongoing relationship last? A new ongoing relationship with an SEO consultant typically begins with a six-month initial engagement; however, many consultants offer month-to-month consulting. Your organic search traffic, leads, and revenue will take some time to really grow, but six months should be enough time to see how well things are working.
• How do cancellations work? In the event that the SEO consulting relationship does not succeed, it is essential to have an exit strategy. Even if the SEO consultant is doing an excellent job, your business may face financial difficulties that necessitate a reduction in spending. Since Google is frequently one of the primary sources of website traffic, we believe that an SEO consultant should be one of the last resources to be discarded in these circumstances; however, your financial situation may force you to act.
• What are the terms of payment? Make sure you and the SEO consultant you’re considering hiring can reach a payment arrangement that works for both of you. Some consultants prefer Net 15 or Net 30 payment terms, while others require upfront payment. However, don’t expect payment terms beyond Net 30, as the consultant won’t be able to manage their own finances with such a long payment term. Since they need to concentrate on the SEO campaigns of your clients rather than chasing down payments, they might personally request upfront payment because they are aware that the quality of their service can support it. Also talk about how payments will be made (e.g., by check, credit card, or direct deposit).

How Much to Pay an SEO Consultant?

We are aware that business owners are hoping for a clear response here. You want a number that will easily fit into your annual or monthly budget. Sadly, it is not that straightforward. The fact of the matter is that the SEO consultant you need or want can have a significant impact on how much SEO costs. Pricing for SEO consultants varies widely based on a variety of factors, including the quantity of content required, expectations, growth projections, and required services.

You will first need to provide some information about your company to the consultant in order to get an accurate estimate of the cost of SEO. An SEO consultant can use this to estimate how long projects should take to finish, how much work will be required, and what kind of content will be needed. When you get SEO pricing estimates from the consultant, you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect so you don’t get overcharged or are surprised later. Search engine optimization consulting rates change, yet they ordinarily lie in the $100-$200/hour range, depending upon the reputation of the SEO consultant.

Why Should you Hire an SEO Consultant?

The reason to hire an SEO consultant is that SEO is often too complicated for a company to manage internally without having an SEO expert on staff. The marketing team won’t be able to handle all technical SEO, keyword research, on-page optimization, and building internal and external links well, which will put them in a very bad position. In addition, the marketing team may not have the expertise necessary to analyze your analytics data in a way that will explain why your organic search traffic is trending in a particular direction during periods of growth or decline for your company’s website. The cost of not having an expert SEO resource on hand is frequently too great to ignore when a business’s primary source of traffic is Google. Choosing the right SEO consultant and hiring them will help your business get the most out of this top source of traffic.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to be an expert in everything to be a business owner. However, you must be able to identify growth opportunities and experts who can assist you. You need to be familiar with the fundamentals enough to know what to look for, what outcomes to anticipate, and how to value the expertise and efforts of your hire. Putting resources into search engine optimization is an unquestionable requirement for each business that wants online reach. In addition, it will save you time, money, and stress in the long run if you choose an SEO specialist who is right for your company. Find an expert with proven SEO results, experience working in your niche and across business sectors, and who takes a look at your business comprehensively.

FAQs