Nowadays, marketing is easy to start. Pay a few bucks, and you are ready to launch a campaign. The hard part is getting results like sales. So, it’s important to ask questions like, Should I hire an SEO consultant? Will it be worth it?
If you are a small business owner with a small budget, you have a difficult choice to make.
The amount you will spend on SEO ( and marketing generally) varies. The costs depend on many factors, such as your niche, target audience, tools, and competition. If you already have a website, what needs to improve? Or what are you doing wrong?
Yet, the investment in Search Engine Optimization or content marketing doesn’t pay off on day one or in one month.
Therefore, you need to really understand what you are getting into.
Take a deep breath. This article will explain all you need to create a Search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to bring more visitors and generate a great return on your investment in 6 – 12 months.
Read diligently. Along the line, you will understand why consultants charge their fees and why you might need SEO services.
How much is an SEO Specialist’s Salary?
The average salary of a freelance SEO consultant is approximately $5000 per month.
Let’s quickly talk about the job responsibilities of a consultant.
What Does An SEO Consultant Do?
An SEO consultant is a professional who helps businesses to work on websites and content to bring more traffic. His overall aim is to ensure that the business websites get many internet visitors every month. He can also help with how the traffic can be converted to sales.
The work of a consultant can be complicated at times. However, it always begins with you and your business. The professional will try to know what business you run, your industry, how competitive the industry is, how much you want to invest in this, your goals, and how fast you want to start seeing results.
Remember, I said the aim is long-term. I mean 12- 18 months, but that doesn’t mean you won’t start seeing results in 6 months. And you should be worried about how long the results will last.
What the SEO Consultant Does Include:
- Performing an extensive SEO audit of your website (site architecture, content gap, backlinks, etc.)
- Carrying out keyword research in your niche
- Creating a content strategy
- Optimizing your pages
- Creating exceptionally useful content for readers
- Creating a backlink-building strategy
- Making your content and website user or mobile-friendly
These are the responsibilities. But for a business owner, we are looking at:
- Putting your website at the top of SERP (search engine result page)
- Bring more visitors to your websites
- More sales
- A website that loads faster
- Solving technical issues that can make it hard to navigate the website
- Ensuring you become an authority in this niche
So you are asking, should I hire an SEO consultant? Let me ask you this, do you have a background in content marketing, web design, and knowledge of SEO?
If you’re not, then you need to hire a professional.
Another problem is things aren’t as straightforward as they seem. You might hit a roadblock when
- Search engines update how the algorithm works
- Your traffic drops significantly
- Your website disappears in search result pages.
- You can make mistakes, or some problems emerge, such as keyword cannibalization or irresponsive design.
An experienced freelance SEO consultant knows how to get your website back on track as soon as possible so the traffic and sales don’t drop for too long.
And that brings us to the most question to ask.
Why Should I Hire An SEO Consultant?
The reward of SEO can be immense or phenomenal. The dividend can last for as long as your business exists. It might become extremely hard to beat you if you acquire a lot of backlinks (I am talking about 20k+).
Long term, if you build a lot of traffic, you can convert those to subscribers and create your email list. The list is yours, and you can sell products to them forever.
In the short term, much traffic can translate to many sales.
You want to invest in an SEO consultant for the following reasons:
#1. Create long-term marketing solutions
A professional can observe trends and patterns. Then, when they create content or start working, they can create long-term results. You can command a great percentage of traffic now and in the coming years. f you build on what the expert has started, you can get the largest traffic share and remain an authority in your niche.
If you want long-term marketing results, you should hire an SEO expert.
#2. Get lots of traffic in a short-term
A professional can bring lots of traffic and usually get the result faster. This is because they’ve been doing it for a while, which gives them the expertise. If things don’t work, they can adjust plans faster.
#3. Take the burden off your shoulders
You can be good at a lot of things. However, you can’t be good at everything. o SEO consultant does SEO for a living. When you hire one, you give yourself the time to focus on other things in your business while the professional work on SEM.
#4. Learn what they are doing
SEM can be monitored in detail from traffic to views to conversion, unlike TV ads or radio ads, which even cost more. Hiring an SEO consultant can serve as a master class in learning SEO. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Consoles to monitor what professionals do. Then learn how they do it.
Check for things like:
- Backlinks, how and where
- Page design and website responsiveness
- Source of traffic
- Where they are sharing content online
Soon enough, you will have a fair knowledge of how to get more traffic and more sales through SEO.
#5. Get more services than SEO
Most professionals don’t start with SEO as a service or have other skills that could mean a lot to your business. Some of these skills include:
- Creating Google ads
- Content marketing
- Designing landing pages
- Working on pay-per-click ads
- Copywriting
- Social media marketing
I am a freelance SEO writer, but I started as a storyteller. I think of your website content as a story that gives readers a beginning, middle, and end. So they are hooked earlier and understand the solution.
How to Hire an SEO Consultant
Choosing the best SEO consultant is not an easy thing. There are so many agencies and professionals that it is difficult to know who to trust.
These are the questions to ask and steps to take:
- Hire someone who has proof. Reviews, comments, and referrals can be evidence if they come from trusted people.
- Ask for recommendations from people you trust.
- Hire an SEO consultant from job boards. If they are getting sales and reviews, they are giving their clients results.
- Ask for their website link. Heck, the website link with Moz or Ahref. You want to see the number of backlinks they have. Also, check the page authority of some of their content.
- Ask for the websites of previous clients. Then, you can check for the amount of traffic or backlinks. You must be careful and ask for proof of work. You don’t know if this person achieved those results except you get a quote from a client endorsing his service.
- Most importantly, check the number of visitors to their website in the past 3 months. Some things, such as backlinks, Moz Domain Authority, and Page Authority, can be achieved through the black hat techniques, but the number of visitors should correspond. If you are gaming the process, you should at least have results to show for it.
- Let them break down their process for you. A professional consultant can’t accurately tell how many visitors you will get. They can’t guarantee you will become number one on the search engine result page after certain months. However, they can describe their process and assure you of the results.
- Check job boards. Here you will see what people are saying about the consultant. Choose those who have many reviews. The more, the better. You can hire an SEO freelancer on Upwork.
What Am I Doing Wrong in Search Engine Optimization?
Maybe you have started working on your SEO strategy but are not getting the desired results. It’s one of the reasons you should hire an SEO consultant because it is his job to figure out what you are not doing correctly.
Most likely, you don’t have a strategy in the first place. You don’t perform keyword research, create a content strategy, or work on your site architecture. You don’t plan on making a topic cluster, and you have a short-term plan, forgetting that Google or Bing will update their algorithm and your competitors are not sleeping.
Hire An SEO Consultant
You need one if you’re starting an online business and planning to have a website.
You can always message me if you need an SEO Specilists and want to take your marketing to a greater height.