To answer the question, ‘what does an SEO consultant do?’ we look at details of the SEO consultant role and what results you should expect.
To compete effectively you must have a firm grip on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) theories and practices. This article answers that but also shows the advantages of bringing in SEO help. As well as providing you with important tips on what to look for when hiring an SEO consultant.
What is an SEO Consultant?
To find information on products, services and locations, users rely heavily on getting help from search engines; primarily Google.
There’s a site to show how many Google searches there have been today. Seeing that figure rocket to the millions each day gives context to why SEO is so important to businesses.
To get your products high in search results you need to build the three pillars of SEO which are Authority, Relevance, and Trust.
A freelance SEO consultant is a professional well versed in the science behind search engines. They are also a digital marketing expert who’s not part of a large agency.
How does an SEO Consultant Organise Their Work?
What does an SEO consultant do with their advanced insights and abilities? They apply them brilliantly to your individual business goals and needs.
Every organisation is different, and each has its own ‘ideal customer’ who searches for relevant products or services. The right SEO consultant for you will connect the dots; making sure your digital marketing reaches the right audience via search engines, in a way that compels users to click on your links.
An SEO consultant generally organising their activities into four categories:
1. Strategy and Planning 2. Technical SEO 3. Content and On-Page SEO 4. Off-Page SEO
SEO Strategy and Planning
SEO is not something you ‘do’ once. It’s a continuous process. That includes keeping up to date on the way internet users and Google assess the authority of search answers. As well as the often-varying ways people frame search questions.
Search behaviours can also differ across devices. For example, voice searches are become more common, using the ever-growing range of handsfree technology.
This means an SEO Consultant would start off by creating an individualised strategy and plan for your organisation. One that drills down on the behaviours and decision-making processes of your specific target audience.
What does an SEO consultant do with this plan? They can either provide your organisation with the skills to action it or deliver its activities themselves. What is vital, is that this SEO plan is continuously evaluated and updated. Including how well you’re performing against the primary SEO methods outlined below.
Technical SEO
Your website architecture (the way it’s designed and built) has a role to play in creating strong SEO. There are multiple tasks you can perform within your website’s layout to give search engines’ complex algorithms the right markers to find, read, and measure your pages’ topicality.
Content and On-Page SEO
The most fundamental of all SEO assets is relevant and unique content. This builds your ‘authority’ when Google ranks pages.
At one time you could ‘stuff’ website pages with keywords to artificially inflate your position in search results. Now, your SEO consultant helps you to create trustworthy product descriptions, articles, blogs and other content that boost your on-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
This is possibly one of the least understood methods of building strong SEO. It involves the creation of links on third-party websites. However, these days this must involve an authentic relationship and value-added content exchange.
What does an SEO consultant do to build off-page SEO? It can include a range of activities, including placement of guests blogs and articles, and mutually beneficial joint ventures with third parties that help drive traffic to your site and support good SEO.
Off-page SEO also looks carefully at the ways your pages appear in search results, ensuring what searchers see is compelling enough to make them click on your site.
What Does an SEO Consultant do for Businesses?
An SEO consultant’s role often starts with firming up and possibly developing your brand and your product portfolio, in terms of what consumers may search for.
They would then develop a strategy and plan that revolves around your business aims and the products you sell. Including activities from the list outlined above.
However, the ultimate goal would be to ensure that your products or services are consistently high in search results – at least in the top 5 but preferably top spot. Not temporarily, but always!
This increases leads – from the users most likely to buy your products and services – and grows your business.
What Results Can You Expect from an SEO Consultant?
From gaining greater insights into how SEO works you can start to appreciate the best ways to measure how effective your SEO consultant is. Make sure that they:
Establish a strategy and a plan
This must be totally attuned to your products, brand, and business goals. As well as any budget restraints on paid-for SEO activities.
Improve overall website metrics
What does an SEO consultant do in terms of monitoring your plan’s success? You can evaluate SEO against a series of values, including website authority over time, click-through rates, domain rating and your URL rating. Traffic analytics highlight what is working best, and what needs to be improved.
Increase organic search traffic to the website
This is the core way to measure SEO success. How well your pages perform in organic searches and therefore in lead generation.
Increase the number of leads and newsletter subscribers from organic search
Each organisation has a different concept of ‘leads’, so you may want SEO to create more potential purchasers or more subscribers to your newsletter for example.
Improve visibility of the website across chosen topics
This comes down to whether your consultant is making your website easier to find, by your target audiences.
Improve rankings of chosen keywords
This measure of a consultant’s effectiveness comes down to evaluating success against aims in your digital marketing plan. Are you now higher in search results connected to your products?
How Much Does an SEO Consultant Cost?
The best SEO consultant services are a wise investment in your competitive edge and consistent lead generation.
To get the sort of results you need, our tiered charges for SEO are:
£1,000 p/month for a basic service – where perhaps you only need one or two elements of a full SEO service, including that essential bespoke SEO strategy and plan.
£2,000 p/month for a comprehensive SEO service, suitable for most SME’s, which includes extensive help in developing SEO-rich content, vital backlinks and ongoing assessment.
£3,5000 p/month for an enterprise, fast growth or an e-commerce service, which focuses on both SEO best practice for organic website traffic but also carefully managed paid search activities.
Should I work with an SEO Consultant, an SEO Agency or an in-house SEO employee?
You have a choice of ways to add more SEO expertise to your organisation.
The benefits of working with an SEO Consultant
These tend to be highly experienced professionals with in-depth knowledge of the hundreds of factors Google uses to rank page authority. They can tailor SEO solutions to the individual goals of clients, and introduce ways to continuously evaluate and build SEO success.
They are often more cost-effective and less of a time burden than recruiting an SEO specialist. There is no training requirement, and they grow and enhance their skills in their own time!
Plus, using SEO consultants gives you a degree of flexibility, and you can vary the level of involvement/cost over time.
The benefits of working with an SEO Agency
For larger and more complex organisations, buying in the services of an SEO agency can make sense. For example, you may need multiple SEO practitioners to work with different Product Managers or to craft major campaigns.
You also have the benefit of a whole SEO account team to support your digital marketing year-round.
The benefits of hiring an SEO Employee
Having an employee dedicated to SEO activities is a luxury few organisations can afford. If your pockets are deep enough, it enables you to totally immerse your SEO executive in your brand, goals and integrated digital campaigns.
What does an SEO consultant do? Find out
To discuss your business aims and the ways an SEO consultant can help you to develop your digital marketing and lead generation, please contact Challis Marketing.