Getting your website noticed on the SERPs (search engine results pages) of major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing can be much easier said than done. However, it is imperative that it is done if you want your business to compete effectively with others in the online sphere.
TheMarketingblog describes one study’s discovery that “around 53% of the clicks that come from users who are searching for services online come to the sites that rank higher on the search engines.” So, what could an SEO consultant do to help get your own website’s prominence soaring?
Save you time
Keeping yourself updated on what works and what doesn’t in SEO can be exhausting, especially considering the regular changes to Google’s algorithms. Therefore, optimising a website’s search profile needs to be an ongoing, rather than one-off, job.
Fortunately, an SEO consultant would be able to take that job off your hands — and implement and manage SEO methodologies on your behalf. This would enable you to free up time to spend on other aspects of running your business.
Identify room for improvement
If you aren’t an SEO expert, it’s too easy to assume that a website is better geared for SEO success than it actually is. For example, a well-designed website could still suffer from sluggish load times that result in people leaving it alarmingly quickly.
However, by undertaking an in-depth SEO audit of this site, an SEO consultant can detect any aspects of it that, unknowingly to you, have been hampering your promotional efforts.
Tap into specialist knowledge and expertise
Running an organisation carries so many different responsibilities that you could understandably lack time to get up to speed with SEO. Also, even if you did go it alone with SEO, an awful lot of trial and error could be involved along the way, potentially costing you precious clicks.
It’s reassuring, then, that an SEO consultant will have already built up their own encyclopaedic body of SEO knowledge that you can start utilising from the moment you first engage them. Basically, they already know a lot about what works SEO-wise.
Keep up with developments in the SEO world
As alluded to earlier in this article, you can never just rest on your laurels when it comes to SEO, which is essentially a race. In other words, letting your guard down would risk competitors quickly catching up with and surpassing you.
However, while thriving in a race might not really require you to shake up your tactics from time to time, SEO is a very different situation. That’s because Google regularly refines its algorithm, i.e. how the search engine decides what links to list, and in what order, in response to a search query.
Monitoring algorithm changes can be as tiring as you are likely imagining. However, an SEO consultant’s routine responsibilities include closely following SEO-related news so that their clients’ websites can benefit.
Assess your SEO with an open mind
You might be tempted to just recruit an in-house SEO consultant if your business doesn’t have one already. However, a Search Engine Journal article warns that, sometimes, “in-house SEOs can start to feel like they have blinders on.”
This means that “they don’t have the opportunity to step outside of the rigid confines of their particular niche, making them far less versatile than their consultant counterpart.”
In contrast, having worked with many different clients across various industries, consultants tend to have a broader knowledge base than in-house SEOs and be more agile.
Take your money further
It’s tempting to buy into marketing hyperbole and spend big on a certain SEO package just because it promises the world. However, an SEO consultant should really be helping you to streamline your financial expenditure on SEO so that you get a good return on investment (ROI).
After all, your business is bound to already have plenty of financial outgoings — and you want everything you spend to result in something meaningful. The ultimate objective is to shift your website up the SEO rankings — and doing this doesn’t have to be as pricey as you might expect.
Be there when you need them
Unlike in-house SEOs, SEO consultants aren’t tied to specific work hours. So, if there’s some abrupt, unexpected hit to your SEO literally overnight, a consultant can quickly be on the case to ascertain what went wrong and how the situation can be remedied.
There’s far from just one way to succeed in SEO, but a consultant can assist you in sourcing the right ingredients for a winning formula.
