Having an actionable step-by-step plan, also known as an SEO road map may be crucial to improving your search rankings.
In most cases, webmasters and website owners may know how to implement an SEO strategy but may struggle to design the strategy itself.
This is where SEO consulting comes in. In this article, we will discuss how an SEO consultant can help your business, the types of service they render, and what to look out for when choosing an SEO consultant for your business.
What Are SEO Consulting Services?
SEO consulting services are search engine optimization services offered by consultants, and agencies that are tailored to your business needs.
The purpose of a consulting service is to create a custom marketing strategy that looks to help your website outrank its competitors in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
To achieve this, SEO consultants carry out a comprehensive audit of your website and make recommendations based on the findings from this audit. This gives a bespoke SEO solution to your business.
What Is A SEO Consultant?
An SEO consultant is an SEO expert or professional who is paid by businesses or site owners to advise on how to get higher rankings, more targeted traffic, and ultimately more profit from the said websites.
What Does an SEO Consultant Do?
An SEO consultant carries out an audit on a website and then creates an SEO strategy based on the result of the audit. An SEO audit includes an analysis of the website’s content, backlinks, technical position, competitors analysis, and search query analysis. Using the data compiled from the audit, an SEO consultant then structures a step-by-step, actionable SEO plan.
This plan is usually a long-term plan and aims to create relevant content for the website to publish, attracting and converting the correct target audience. The SEO strategy also focuses on link building and getting different types of backlinks to help the website establish itself as an authority in the industry.
Why Is SEO Consulting Service Important?
There is hardly a business today that cannot be helped by search engine optimization. A good SEO campaign is not only capable of increasing search rankings for your website, but also revenue for your business. Hence, SEO consulting service is crucial to your business in today’s world.
SEO requires a lot of testing time and again, which includes failures most times. SEO consultants have over time obtained proven results from these tests and can bring their wealth of experience to help you outrank your competitors on the search engine results pages ( SERPs ).
What Factors Do They Optimize
The ranking factor an SEO consultant targets will depend on the result of the website audit carried out. Search engines like Google have a lot of ranking factors. The most notable ones include:
User Experience
The experience a user gets when they visit your website is of utmost importance to search engines. Search engines like Google only want to show websites that have the best user experience.
If outranking your competitors in the search engine results pages is important, then you need to work on improving your website’s user experience. Factors that affect a website’s user experience include pagespeed, mobile-friendliness, security, etc.
Your Content
The content on your website and its delivery are very crucial to the success of your SEO campaign. SEO consultants ensure that your website content is speaking directly to the needs and queries of your targeted audience through in-depth keyword research.
Your Backlink Profile
Backlinks are links pointing to your website from an external website. They are one of the most important factors search engines like Google consider when ranking websites. SEO consultants focus on this factor as it helps to increase your domain authority thereby increasing your chances of beating your competitors to a top position in the SERPs.
What Type Of Services Do They Render?
Below is a breakdown of the services you can expect such as:
Voice Optimization
SEO Audits
Audits are super important to any SEO campaign/effort. They outline steps to be carried out to achieve the desired SEO goal. SEO audits expose lapses in your current SEO strategy and give you an insight into how your top competitors are performing and where their traffic is coming from.
They check individual web pages, their content and meta descriptions, site performance, and other factors that contribute to search engine ranking. With information such as this, you have a blueprint of what works and what you need to do to get to where you want to be SEO-wise.
Local SEO
Between 2015 and 2017, Google research revealed that local searches without the “near me” phrase increased by 150 percent. With the user’s location information, Google (and local search services) improved at providing local results for user search terms.
Businesses that already had a local SEO plan in place easily benefitted from these improvements.
Optimizing for local SEO is a no-brainer today, and you would be missing out on a lot of potential customers when you ignore local SEO. The best practitioners of local SEO not only regularly show up on the top of the page; they also show up in the coveted “local pack,” which prominently features the top three businesses that meet the searcher’s terms.
With mobile devices becoming more prevalent today, local SEO is very crucial, especially to small and local businesses.
E-Commerce
Getting more traffic is top of mind for any e-commerce business owner, the higher the number of website visitors, the more likely the chances of the conversion right?
Ecommerce SEO is the search engine optimization of an online store. Writing long descriptions with relevant keywords on every product page is an example of optimization. Obtaining backlinks from relevant websites can also improve your online store’s ranking position.
E-commerce SEO is quite different in user intent from other forms of SEO. The intent here is more transactional and SEO consultants have mastered the art of attracting and converting this audience through SEO.
How Much Does SEO Consulting Services Cost?
Short answer – what you get is what you pay for. Prices for SEO services depend on several factors, including your goals, aggressiveness, and SEO agency. On average, monthly SEO plans cost $1500 to $10000 per month, while hourly SEO costs $100 to $300 per hour. Request a custom quote from an SEO service provider for the most accurate SEO rates.
Why You Should Hire An SEO Consultant
for example claims that SEO is one of the single biggest ROI-driving marketing strategies there is – with 32% of marketers worldwide saying it offers the highest ROI and 41% saying it offers even just a medium ROI. This proves that SEO is the way to go for your business. Now, why should you hire an SEO consultant?
It Saves You Money
It takes a significant financial commitment to assembling a team of SEO professionals. The financial implication of paying salaries and benefits while investing in software and equipment may be too heavy to bear. SEO consultants or agencies, charge you a customs fee monthly based on your goals and how aggressive you intend to go.
With this package comes all the software and equipment you’ll ever need to improve your SEO game. Also, you are at liberty to change your consultant or agency when they’re underperforming without risking litigation.
It Saves You Time
Time is one luxury most businesses do not have, especially for SEO strategy which is very time intensive. SEO is a continuous process that requires many hours of research, optimization, and maintenance.
Outsourcing your SEO to a consultant/agency gives you access to a team of professionals, freeing you up to focus on other business tasks. This is one reason why hiring an SEO agency is so tempting for many businesses, they specialize in completely managing your search marketing campaign practically 24/7.
Better Efficiency
Agencies have a tightly knit team that can develop your SEO strategy and implement it simultaneously. With SEO professionals, website technicians, and content writers on staff, agencies have the team and resources at their disposal to make seamless changes. Since they are constantly working on your website, updates can be made much more quickly and any urgent changes can be made on the spot.
They Have Experience with Brands Just Like Yours
SEO Consultants/ agencies have experience with many different clients and industries and have a solid understanding of what strategies work best. They’ve already been through years of trial and error and rigorous testing across a multitude of business landscapes, so they’re ahead of the curve on what will drive results.So why do you need an SEO consultant/ agency instead of doing it yourself?
After all, who knows your business better than you? Well, the answer is simple. An SEO consultant/ agency has experience working with dozens of other brands just like yours, within your niche. You don’t have to go through the rigors of testing and failing while losing money in the process to get the desired results. In some cases, you end up not getting the desired result after all.
What You Should Look For In An SEO Consulting Service
Now that you have decided to employ the services of an SEO consultant/agency, you need to know what to look out for to get quality SEO service.
They Should Have Plenty Of SEO Experience
This goes without saying. One of the leverages SEO consultants have over you or an in-house specialist is experience. Why then should you hire an SEO consultant without quality experience? When looking for a professional SEO consultant, be sure they have several years of experience, a strong track record of past clients and projects, and references or testimonials.
They Should Show Proven Results
Referrals are good, testimonials are great, but proven results trump them all. SEO consulting services looking to take you on should be able to show you results in a consistent manner. This is the only way you can be sure that they can replicate these results for your business.
They Should Provide Custom Service And Strategies
While SEO results and strategies can be replicated for niches and industries, no two businesses are the same. Your business will always need a custom strategy based on your SEO position and value proposition at that point in time. Beware of SEO consultants who attempt to take you on without first analyzing the peculiarity of your SEO needs.
Final Verdict
SEO is a fast-paced, high-stakes game that brands are forced to engage in if they want to compete in the digital age. While many are tempted to tackle this on their own, there are plenty of reasons why reaching out to an SEO consultant/agency and getting their help may make sense for you. We are after all one of the top inbound marketing agencies!
QCKBOT can be your remote SEO team, getting you the results your business needs. Reach out to us for a free website audit today for insights on how you can stay ahead of the competition.