How to hire a seo consultant – 8 Basic steps
When you hire a SEO consultant for your business, there might be many questions running in your mind like:
- Who to hire?
- Where to find the best?
- Are you sure they’ll do a good job?
- Is this consultant the right choice for your company?
When you hire a SEO consultant that is qualified, professional and affordable, your company performance will reach the skies. A wrong hire can have equally adverse effects.
This blog covers 8 basic and important steps to hire an SEO consultant.
1. Experience and knowledge
When you hire an SEO consultant, make sure that they know what they claim to know. You must know about their current performance and any past project they have done. Be clear in your mind that when you hire an SEO consultant, he is going to help you with increasing traffic, sales and organic searches of your business. It is important to rank for the keywords from your industry.
Consider the SEO consultant that has actually done something for his clients and given positive results. His efforts should be industry oriented and keyword driven.
2. Your exact need
When you decide to hire an SEO consultant, the reasons may be many. You have to be very clear about why you need SEO. Read the given blog for the main reasons why a business needs SEO and focus on your main requirements.
3. Comfortable to work with
When you make a new friend, you always make sure that you are comfortable with the person. Comfort ensures better communication and smooth workflow. You should adopt the same principle when you hire an SEO consultant.
Good personal relationships will favor better business processes. A good SEO consultant will not take up almost every project that comes to him. Rather he will ensure that each of his clients is easy to work with. To make it easier for you, let us consider 2 factors-
- Do you like having a conversation with this person? Do you both listen to each other equally and share ideas?
- Will you be comfortable having a conversation with the person on a routine basis? Because you will be doing this frequently to check up on the work progress.
4. The SEO methodology they adopt
Some controversial niches such as gambling or pharma may require some roughly designed SEO actions plans. But most of the safer and non-controversial niches undergo long-term SEO steps for better and long lasting results.
When you hire an SEO consultant, the person may claim to use only white hat SEO link building techniques. You can not go just by their words, check for yourself. A good SEO consultant will discuss the following given points:
- SEO Audit
- Site Content Audit
- Technical SEO
- Website Architecture
- User Experience
- Keyword Research
- On-Page SEO
- Content Development
- Link building and acquisition
Link acquisition is the most important element here. You should know how they acquire links for your website. For quick results, many SEO companies adopt unfair means such as PBNs or black hat SEO. Such link acquisition methods can harm your web authority and impose penalties from Google.
5. Make your expectations clear
When you hire an SEO consultant that is not only professional but also expert at what he does, you will able to clearly understand what you can expect from them. These expectations are directly related to the work done.
If they are developing an SEO plan from scratch, you might get to hear that you will see the results in 6 to 12 months. But the reality is there is no exact time for the results to be visible in SEO. You can never be sure that after the given time your website will be on the top of every SERP.
SEO takes time no doubt. But if done correctly the results can be long-lasting and fruitful.
6. Trust your SEO consultant
You hire an SEO agency or expert because you do not have the necessary skills and knowledge. Thus you should listen to what your SEO company says. This does not mean putting blind faith in them. You should ask them questions wherever you feel the need to.
If you constantly poke them and cross question them on what they do, you might not get the desired results. Give them the liberty to do what they want to because obviously, SEO is their forte, not yours. Trusting your partner will help you develop better business relationships.
7. Follow the action plan
Even if you hire the world’s best SEO consultant, you will fail if you do not follow the action plan decided by them. They are more experienced in SEO than you and thus know what will be the best for you and what not.
Do not hire a consultant until you are fully convinced and prepared to do as they say.
8. Do not delay
Many times it happens that you delay something just to avoid the pain of something new but boring. SEO may not be your field, but you should never postpone hiring an SEO consultant. The longer you wait for the longer your business will suffer.
SEO is a game changer if done correctly. Do it at the right time and enjoy the results. Do not wait for your competitor to go way ahead of you, hire an experienced SEO agency today!
Contact Web Design Plus SEO today for an expert SEO insight in your business!! If your in Miami or Doral area stop in for a consultation and we can walk you through a live audit of your website.