Life has many questions, like, “Will the Fast & Furious series ever end?” “Are those leftovers in the back of the fridge still good?” Or, “Should I hire an SEO consultant?”
While we can’t answer the first two questions, we can help you with the third. So if you want to hire an SEO expert, here are a few things you should know before you begin.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process of making your website, its pages, and content more understandable for search engine crawlers and people.
Due to its many moving parts, SEO can be a complicated, time-consuming process. And if you don’t know what you’re doing or don’t have time to focus on a strategy, it can quickly become overwhelming.
For this reason, many people choose to hire an SEO expert.
Deciding to hire an SEO consultant is an investment that can save you tons of time while delivering multifold returns.
Not only that, but most SEO specialists and digital marketing agencies offer helpful services like:
However, if you hire an SEO expert and they go rogue, it could be quite the opposite.
You’ll also want to learn a few things about SEO beforehand. While you don’t need to become an expert, it’s good to understand the process, so you know that you’re not working with someone who uses objectionable tactics.
Below are a few resources from Google to help you get started:
Although SEO can be a complex beast, most of it is completely doable — especially when you have the right expertise on your side.
When you want to hire an SEO consultant, the sooner you find someone, the better. This process is a labour of love that can take anywhere from 4 to 12 months to yield results.
You can hire an SEO expert at any point, but the best times are when you want to redesign your website or create a new one. Doing so ensures that your site is optimized from top to bottom, from backend to frontend.
Even if you don’t have plans for a total overhaul, an SEO strategy can easily improve your existing site.
This 11-minute-long video from Google is an excellent resource that goes in-depth about how to hire an SEO
Below are a few tips to help you find and hire an SEO consultant.
These questions can help you decide if a prospective SEO expert is right for you during an interview:
Besides that, assess the candidate’s level of interest in the job, your site, and your company. If interest seems minimal or nonexistent, hire an SEO specialist who asks questions like:
When you hire an SEO consultant, ask your potential candidates to provide a list of past clients you can contact. Somebody without references or experience is either new to the industry or someone to avoid.
When you reach out to the candidate’s previous clients, consider sending an email first, then contacting them by phone. Even a brief call can provide better insights than email because you can ask questions and get immediate clarification.
You should ask questions such as:
Before you hire an SEO consultant, ask your candidate to perform a comprehensive audit. This accomplishes three things:
Of course, you’ll likely have to pay for this audit, but it’s well worth it. You should provide read-only access to your site via Google Search Console, which means the SEO expert can view or read your site’s files or directories but can’t make modifications.
Your business and niche strongly influence:
So naturally, if you hire an SEO consultant who has experience in your business or industry, you’ll enjoy more positive outcomes.
SEO is a multi-layered, multi-channelled process. So it makes sense that some SEO strategies are better suited for some industries than others.
For example, if you run a local dog grooming business, you’d want to appear on Google maps for relevant searches such as “vancouver dog groomer.”
Alternatively, if you’re a digital marketing agency, you have to compete not only against local firms but major players like Neil Patel, Hootsuite, WebFX, and many more.
For this reason, hire an SEO expert who is well-acquainted with your niche and knows how to rank against leading competitors.
However, avoid working with someone who has ranked one of your direct competitors because you don’t want them to use the same strategies, even if they were successful. You want to hire an SEO specialist who will do something different and hopefully outpace your competitors.
If you want to take things a step further, hire an SEO advisor skilled in local or international SEO, depending on your business. If your dog grooming business has several locations, find a multi-location SEO speicalist who has helped other local businesses with multiple branches.
The size of your website is another factor to consider as you hire an SEO consultant. For example, Amazon’s SEO strategy would look a lot different than a local dog groomer because it has millions of pages. Find someone familiar with your type of website and get better results.
Before you hire an SEO consultant, make sure their workflow and communication align with yours.
This facilitates a smoother relationship, and in turn, better results.
A few things to consider include:
SEO is a long-term process, and you will be working together for an extended period. You definitely don’t want your relationship to go south, leaving you starting over from scratch.
Many SEO consultants are highly talented experts who know how to get results using primarily white hat techniques.
However, there are also several bad actors who have given the sector a bad rap because of disingenuous marketing strategies and search engine manipulation.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but when you hire an SEO consultant, avoid anyone who violates Google’s webmaster guidelines at all costs.
So, when you hire an SEO expert and they offer suggestions, ask them to substantiate their advice with trustworthy sources like:
If search engines catch you using one of the following black hat techniques, you will be harshly penalized with lower rankings or straight up removed from Google’s index.
Also known as “cloaked site” or “phantom page,” shadow domains are specifically designed for search engine crawlers, not people.
If you hire an SEO consultant who does this, they could create these sites while alleging they’re for clients. But if the relationship takes a turn, the SEO expert could redirect the site to a new domain or possibly a competitor’s.
This ultimately leaves you paying the SEO for setting up a competing website that you don’t even own.
According to Google, doorway pages are “sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination.”
Another way of putting it:
A bad actor uses their SEO knowledge to create a landing page they know will reach the top of Google. When someone clicks on one of these links in the search results, they are directed to a completely different website – which likely has nothing to do with the user’s search query.
Frustrating, right?
If you hire an SEO expert who uses doorway pages, they may assure that it boosts your page’s relevance in more searches. However, this is anything but true because single pages are seldom relevant for a wide variety of keywords.
What makes doorway pages worse is that they frequently have hidden links to other clients. This diminishes your site’s link popularity (aka backlink count) because it directs to other client websites of your SEO consultant— some of whom may run illegal or unsavoury websites.
The last thing you want is your website’s visitors to click on a link that takes them to an illicit page.
Lastly, link schemes are another common blackhat technique that can include purchasing links from other websites to improve your SERPs. You never want to hire an SEO consultant who participates in this practice because Google explicitly forbids it.
There are many other black hat techniques, so if you have a bad feeling, always trust your gut and never hire an SEO consultant who:
An enticing, informative job listing is an essential part of the process when looking to hire an SEO consultant. Consider it as a form of online promotion for your business.
Here are a few tips for writing a stellar job listing:
After you write the perfect job, your next step is figuring out where to post it.
There are thousands of places to post a job ad online. However, some platforms are better than others. Here are a few of the best websites to utilize when you want to hire an SEO consultant:
If you don’t have time to vet every candidate before you hire an SEO specialist, job boards are an excellent place to find pre-screened professionals. Consider utilizing job boards such as:
As the gig economy grows, more people are turning to social media to find and post jobs. While you’ll have to screen prospects yourself, you can find any number of talented SEO specialists on:
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
If you use one of these platforms to hire an SEO consultant, add a relevant hashtag (i.e., #SEOwanted, #SEOjobs, etc.) so your advertisement appears in searches and newsfeeds.
Do you have a solid social media presence or extensive connections? You can ask the professionals in your network for recommendations.
SEO agencies — and many established consultants — have their own websites where you can view their past work. And, if they’re as skilled as they promise, their sites should appear higher in the search results for their relevant target keywords.
This means if you want to hire an SEO consultant, a simple search engine query can give you a long list of trustworthy experts.
HOT TIP: Want to hire an SEO in your area? Just search “SEO consultant + your location” to find local professionals.
You can choose to hire an SEO agency or an individual consultant. Neither option is inherently better or worse; it ultimately depends on your needs and available resources.
Understanding the difference between the two — then hiring the best one for your brand — can make all the difference.
Individual SEO consultants typically offer strategies and advice for various clients who want more organic website traffic. Consultants may or may not carry out the plan or the optimizations they recommend in their audit.
If you hire an SEO consultant, they can give you excellent advice. But if they don’t have developer or design skills, you’ll either have to do it yourself or hire someone else — and until you do, your website will see little progress.
An SEO agency consists of different team members who specialize in various aspects of SEO, including:
If you are a small business without in-house developers or designers, you may hire an SEO agency since they provide these services in addition to strategy development.
Similarly, if your company does have these experts, a consultant could be hugely beneficial. An experienced professional can communicate with different team members and assign the right people to specific projects, a significant asset for large operations.
SEO goes beyond ranking higher on Google — it also involves almost every aspect of digital marketing. When you hire an SEO consultant, you can take advantage of the following services to create a holistic strategy that dramatically improves your online visibility.
Keyword research is the bread and butter of SEO. If you hire an SEO consultant, they can find the right phrases people use to search for brands, products, and services like yours.
Content strategy is the process of organizing your content plan from top to bottom. If you hire an SEO expert, they can manage multiple aspects of content strategy, including:
A solid content strategy is necessary if you want your content to appear in search results — particularly if your industry is inundated with similar content.
Content creation is another cornerstone of SEO, yet many people consistently miss the mark.
Unfortunately, writing well isn’t enough to rank. It also requires extensive optimization, which means:
And if you hire an SEO expert, they’ll know exactly how to implement an effective content creation strategy.
You should hire an SEO consultant to help with link building, an off-page SEO process that boosts your site’s authority. The more authoritative it is, the better it will rank for specific searches based on your keywords.
Link building requires a three-pronged approach:
Additionally, it requires continuous monitoring (such as watching for external links to competitors or toxic backlinks), which calls for significant time investment and extensive knowledge of proper strategies.
So if you want links that will improve your SERPs, you need help from an expert, which is another benefit you can get when you hire an SEO consultant.
Knowing how to hire an SEO consultant isn’t always a straightforward process. It can take weeks or even months to find the right person or agency. But once you find them, you’ll see massive improvements and sustainable growth.
It’s better to work with someone who underpromises and over-delivers. You want someone who sets practical and reasonable expectations, so you know exactly what to anticipate or whether you need to revamp your approach.
We’re here if you want to hire an SEO consultant. Talk to us about our services (for no charge), or sign up for our email list to learn more about SEO.