You may have heard the term SEO come up several times over the years.

And you’re probably wondering if you need a consultant to help with your new website’s search engine optimization (SEO). 

The answer depends on what you want your website to do. 

If your goal is to get more traffic from search engines, then yes.

Hiring an SEO consultant can help increase your ranking and bring more traffic to your site, hopefully turning into new customers for your business.

But if your goal isn’t solely about getting more traffic, say, expanding brand awareness or generating leads through social media marketing instead of through inbound marketing, then a different strategy might be better.

THE POWER OF SEO

For a potential customer to take a chance on a new and less popular restaurant, they need assurance that it will provide a good experience and offer food they like at a reasonable price.

An SEO consultant help establish credibility and popularity for a business by implementing strategies that get them more exposure online and rank higher in search results – without all of the expensive trial and error from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Do you need an SEO Consultant?

As a business owner, you want our online marketing efforts to work and help drive leads and sales through your website or eCommerce store, right? If you’re not getting new customers coming through your site, then it’s time for a change!

Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider hiring an SEO consultant:

1) You don’t have enough time.

Running a business is time-consuming, especially when you’re new to it. 

Outsourcing your SEO to experts means that you can focus on running your business while handling all technical work.

This frees up more of your time so that you can spend it where it matters most—with your customers and growing your company.

2) Technical isn’t your thing.

If you’re not a developer or don’t enjoy crunching data, it can be pretty challenging to track down errors on your site—and then even more difficult to fix them.

And if you don’t know a crawler from a scraped page, or if you can’t tell your analytics from your PPC from your email marketing. Managing your website SEO will likely be more headache than it’s worth. 

If that sounds like you, it might be time to hire an SEO consultant.

3) Your website needs improvement.

Search engine optimization is a complex, evolving practice, and it’s difficult for most small business owners to know whether their website is being optimized effectively. 

If your web traffic looks like it’s in a slump or if you suspect that Google isn’t indexing main pages on your site, you may need a hand getting back up to speed with search engine best practices.

The truth is that most businesses could benefit from SEO consulting. 

4) Results are too complicated.

There are a lot of different factors that go into ranking well on search engines and even more that goes into building a successful organic traffic campaign. 

The good news is, you don’t have to do all of it on your own—and in many cases, you can hire an expert who will help take some (or most) of these decisions off your plate.

5) DIY SEO isn’t working.

You’ve been trying to optimize your website for search engines yourself, but it hasn’t been working. 

Just because you have some coding knowledge doesn’t mean you should take matters into your own hands and optimize your website yourself.

It’s one thing to experience a drop in your site’s organic traffic, but it’s another thing entirely to try to fix yourself. 

Many of these fixes can be costly and time-consuming, and if you aren’t able to pinpoint what is wrong, the chances are good that you won’t be able to fix it on your own.

A professional search engine optimization consultant will save you time and help ensure that any fixes are done correctly.

Questions to ask before hiring an SEO consultant

• How much experience do they have? 
• What were their results like before? 
• What strategies do they use to get results for their clients, and what is their track record with those strategies 
• How often can you get in touch with them, are they only available by email, or is there a phone number to call them, and will they take your calls if you need help urgently 

Why hire an SEO Consultant instead of an agency?

SEO consultants and agencies offer companies a competitive edge. 

It’s just that SEO gets more personal and budget-friendly when you work directly with consultants.

Yes, some small businesses may handle some on-page optimization on their own, but these optimizations will never be as thorough as those of a trained and experienced professional. 

Food for thought

Don’t expect to see results immediately after your SEO expert gets you off the right foot. 

Search engine optimization is a long-term game, and it can take time to climb up SERPs. 

That said, you shouldn’t have to wait for long—after all, search engines are constantly refining their algorithms and making ranking tweaks.

WHY HIRE ME?
I have a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in content, strategy, website frameworks, and marketing tools. And I’ve worked with various industries as well. I believe I can write your website content in such a way that makes it appear higher in search results (aka good SEO). Why not give me a call?