Introduction

For a business owner or a marketing executive, the process of finding and choosing an SEO consultant holds great importance. As they are responsible for managing, implementing, and planning the organization’s SEO strategy. Also, they provide a variety of services, including keyword strategy implementation, web analytics, web marketing, link building, and content strategy planning. Hiring an individual who’s unfit for the position can create chaos. If you do not want your business to be on the verge of collapse, then hire a competent person who can help expand the boundaries of your online presence.

How to Find A Good  Consultant?

You would have to put extra effort into getting yourself a competent individual. Here are a few ways in which you can search for the best consultant out there.

1)     Ask for Recommendations

If you have been in the industry for a while, then you must already have a trustworthy professional connection with other companies and clients. Use their experience to find a good fit for the job. Moreover, you can send out public messages to reach out to people in your inner circle. You can also send some private messages to renowned names in the industry for their recommendations. The companies would recommend reliable SEO consultants that have already worked with them.

2)     Check Out the Online Listings

There are a bunch of platforms on the internet where you can reach out to reliable people regarding your cause. Here are a few sites which might help you:

• Thumbtack
• com
• co
• com

These sites are home to many SEO consultants that can help rebuild and raise your business. The best thing about these sites is that most of the service providers are reputable and reliable. But make sure that you browse the people related to your niche only.

3)     Reviews Can Be A Lifesaver

Wouldn’t it be wise to analyze the reviews regarding the past record of consultants before hiring them? It can give you a quick survey about whether the person is trustworthy enough or not. For instance, the sites that we have mentioned above have listings, and each profile of the consultant has a review section exhibiting its history in the industry.

You can also analyze the types of projects that the consultant has completed throughout the career. It can help you choose a good and suitable option for your business.

4)     Local Meetups and Networking

You might not know, but there are events organized where SEO consultants from different areas come together in the hope of finding clients. You should track down such events to meetup consultants face to face. It would be easier to have an interview and share information. Moreover, at such events, hundreds of consultants will be available. So, finding the best match would be convenient.

5)     Follow SEO Blogs

Countless blogs are lingering on the internet with SEO consultants as their authors. By reviewing those blogs, you can find out the exact traits that you look for in your team members. There are various sites which can help you in this area. For instance, sites like AllTop gives out a list of recently uploaded quality blog posts.

Traits of A Good  Consultant

If you have narrowed down some competent candidates, then the next step is to filter out the least desirable consultants. Here are some traits that your consultant must have:

1)     Understanding of The Traffic

Thousands of websites come into being every week and become dead in no time due to weak SEO strategy. Website traffic is something that defines the success of your website. The greater the number of visitors you have, the better it is for your company.

The consultant you are going to hire should have insight on how to lure enough traffic to your platform. He should have a record of successfully increasing the rate of visitors per month. If it works, you can convert those visitors to paying customers using AdSense.

2)     Clearly Defines Your SEO Goals

The consultant should be able to differentiate between keywords to understand the unique proposition of your company. It would be his job to find out which online areas need improvement. Furthermore, he should give suggestions and strategic plans to make the content more compelling. A good consultant would not which areas most advantageous to put effort into.

3)     Understanding the True Ranking Potential

Hundreds of business set-ups lack link profile authority to rival and rank the top-searched keyword. A good consultant would never hide the facts and explains your true ranking potential in the market. He should give suggestions to move on to the next keyword phrase with less rivalry and help you identify the most suitable and rank-able alternative.

4)     Will Be Honest

The implementation and the emergence of results of SEO strategies take a considerable amount of time. The consultant should always be upfront about everything. He should tell you how long it would take the desired results to appear.

Responsibilities of an

The requirements and responsibility may vary, but here are a few general responsibilities that your consultant must accept to fulfill.

• Understanding a company’s marketing objectives and goals.
• Keyword research and comparative analysis.
• Webpage optimization.
• Higher google ranking visibility.
• Keyword mapping.
• Find out technical SEO problems and resolve them.
• Comprehensive website audit.
• Understand SEO industry trends.
• Have a deep understanding of the website traffic.
• Online competitive analysis.
• Effective copywriting skills.
• Upgrading existing website content.
• Generate new compelling content ideas.
• Make effective SEO strategy suggestions.
• Understanding of content marketing platforms and content management systems.
• Web development and re-design.
• Use SEO software and SEO tools professionally.
• Creating the URL map.
• Internal linking structure optimization.
• Website completeness and functionality.
• Content distribution and social media platform strategy.
• Online marketing demonstrations.

Conclusion

SEO strategies are a key component to increase your online presence and enhance your business. For that, you would need a consultant to implement those strategies. Through comparative analysis, reviewing the past record, and asking the right questions, you can find a good option.

All the different types and scopes of businesses need Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), but service-based businesses find it more difficult to survive in the digital competition. For such businesses, designing a functional SEO strategy is the key to establish strong online presence, credibility, and audience trust. SEO comprises of several functional and visual elements which are significant for a service-based business to gather more traffic and increase chances of conversions.

A few such elements include focused keywords, meta descriptions, great user experience, faster loading pages, and alike. All of such factors add to the strengthened position of a service-based business among the competitors.

Following are the detailed reasons for why a service-based business needs SEO:

1.    Content Marketing

Service-based businesses mostly focus on their brand awareness through content marketing. While it seems to be the easiest marketing strategy, it needs a lot of effort to be really effective. As a business, you need to pay great attention towards the keywords your competitors are emphasizing on. It becomes important to include your services, locations, and other such factors in your content.

It requires good content marketing and SEO skills to incorporate these keywords into basic content as well as meta description, titles, and headlines, etc. Also, SEO tells where you should place what type of content. As an emerging trend, service-based businesses are also creating visual content such as images and videos. It is important to maintain a balance between written and visual content on your web pages.

This way, SEO contributes greatly to content marketing. It helps shape your strategy and make improvements according to changing trends in service-based business industry and digital environment.

2.    Structuring your web pages

As a service-based business, you must know that it is not possible to incorporate all your information, services, contact, and reviews on a single page. Your website needs to be divided into several web pages. As each of those pages has something new to offer, it should be well-structured.

A well-structured website allows ease of navigation and greatly adds to user experience. SEO dictates how web pages should be structured, how much information should be delivered, how to describe your services, how should negative space be utilized, and how should your offer navigational pathway. All of these are simple and basic SEO requirements, which, when incorporated, deliver beneficial results for service-based businesses.

3.    Simpler URLs

Here’s another significant benefit that SEO renders for service-based businesses. It helps design simpler URLs. Such URLs are easy to search, locate, and understand. Simply by clicking on a URL, you know where it is going to lead you.

This is especially important when establishing marketing and ad campaigns. As internet users click on URLs you have provided, they are most likely going to convert into potential customers.

For example,

www.abcservices.com/services/kitchencountertops is a simple and easily understandable URL. As the user click, he knows what kind of services he is going to come across. As SEO asks businesses to follow such practices, all of these simple things add to the overall better usability and sales.

4.    Effective link building

Link building is a critical factor that SEO puts great emphasis on. However, most people think that link building is important for product-based businesses only. It is time to realize that service-based businesses can equally benefit from link building. This enhances the need for SEO for service-based businesses.

Through link building, you can introduce your business and the services you offer in a better way to your audience. A number of bloggers and content creators write and produce content on different types of services. Linking your web pages to such an informative and productive website can make your business reach a wider audience. While the content offers benefits of a particular service, your business can deliver the needs.

Moreover, link building helps you establish credibility among content creators that attract more traffic and have more followers. This way, it helps in brand awareness and credibility.

5.    Increased traffic

One of the major concerns of service-based businesses is that they do not attract high traffic. And so, it isn’t very easy to generate leads and get conversions. As traffic is the first step, SEO helps focus on the traffic you receive.

Through focused keywords, good layout, easy navigation, and effective marketing campaigns, SEO increases your ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). As you rank high on a search engine, more visitors will be coming to your web pages. This increases the traffic by large, which in turn enhances your leads and conversions.

6.    Data collection and analysis

SEO offers effective and comprehensive data collection and analysis. It compels service-based businesses to gather and interpret data through Google Analytics and other data analysis tools and software.

As product-based businesses have a great focus on these tools to improve their sales, service-based businesses can also increase their profits by adopting such tools.

As you gather, interpret, and analyze data, it explains where your website needs improvements. Also, you can run several tests that SEO recommends, such as A/B Testing, that offer valuable insights into the final results of a campaign even before you launch the campaign.

7.    Better customer service

Last but not least, customer service is an important aspect of a service-based business. Visitors judge service-based businesses over the reviews and testimonials their customers have to offer. Better your customer service, the more the number of customers you attract.

Without excellent customer service, you might receive enough traffic, but you will never be able to get enough customers. Thus, SEO is important to manage your customer service and make it better every passing minute.

Final Thoughts

SEO has great importance for service-based businesses. From content marketing to customer service, it plays a crucial role in managing your web pages, content, traffic, conversions, profits, speed, reviews, and whatnot. If your business is service-based, it is time you start focusing on a sound SEO strategy. It delivers better profits and a higher ROI. This way, you can stand ahead of your competitors.

The digital environment follows a faster pace. Your business operating in this environment needs to be innovative, updated, and trending all the time. It is important to know the current market trends, learn about the preferences of your target audience, and stay keen regarding the position and performance of your competitors. At the top, you need to be aware of your internal performance to maintain high quality.

Traditionally, all of this has been not very easy, but today, Search Engine Optimization Calgary (SEO) is here to make things easier and productive for you. As a business owner, having a sound SEO strategy is all you need for enhanced business progress, larger profits, and higher ROI.

Even though SEO consulting  is only a process to decide your search engine ranking, it can act as an effective tool all along. Knowing how it works can help you greatly. Before that, you need to know when your business needs SEO. Following indicators determine if your business now needs SEO to progress further:

1.    You don’t know how much traffic you are getting and from where

While your business website has maintained a presence online, you must know how much traffic you are getting and from where. Businesses work every day to increase the traffic on their websites. It allows more visitors and, thus, more conversions. If you do not know the size and demographics of your traffic, it’s time you take help from SEO analytics.

Various SEO tools such as Google Analytics helps you know your traffic, audience, and their online behaviors, especially regarding your website. You get to understand and improve a lot of things such as bounce rate, click-through rate (CTR), and whatnot.

2.    Your search engine ranking is declining

If you observe your search engine ranking is declining and you have fallen to a lower page, your business is in dire need of SEO. It is important to learn about the requirements of SEO and fulfill them to maintain your search engine, and keep improving it.

Various SEO requirements such as great content, visual content, better user interface, faster loading speed, internal and external links, etc. are important to comply with.

3.    You are getting lesser leads and conversions than before

If your business experiences lesser leads and conversions all of a sudden, it is likely due to abandoning SEO requirements. As long as businesses focus on SEO, lead generation and conversions take place at a good rate. A decrease in the rate means you should focus on SEO more than ever before.

4.    Your content is outdated and unattractive

Search engines prefer updated and engaging content. In this fast-paced digital environment, great content is what attracts your audience. If your business content is not updated, images and videos are not added, and you are not getting enough traffic, your business performs poorly.

Keeping up to the SEO requirement of captivating and topnotch content is significant. If yours is not, hold up to SEO. Know what SEO demands and update your business website accordingly.

5.    You have not worked on link building until now

Link building is another important thing to do for online businesses. It is a means to interdepend and interconnect with other businesses, blogs, and significant online websites. There are two types of link building, internal and external. Both are equally important to attract and engage visitors.

If your business has not worked on link building until now, learn how important it is for SEO. As you expand the reach with link building and establish a strong online presence, SEO comes into play. It recognizes your efforts and improves your ranking. However, link building is a bit tricky. You need to be careful when implying and choosing web pages to link. SEO analyzes the linked pages carefully.

6.    You have not established reviews and testimonials on your website

A good way to know regarding the performance of your business is by establishing reviews and testimonials. It is critical to allow visitors and customers to leave feedback. While a positive review establishes your credibility, a negative review makes room for improvements. Either way, it is beneficial for your business.

Moreover, it is a crucial aspect of SEO as SEO believes in gathering customer feedback. It increases your accessibility and helps you hold onto an effective SEO strategy.

7.    You do not have a proper plan to follow

Establishing a business and running it in this online world are two different things. Running your business takes more effort and focus. From marketing to sales and customer service, you need to have a proper plan to follow. Without a guide, you cannot do well in this competitive business environment.

If your business does not acquire a plan, it is best to create a sound and practical SEO strategy. You can find the flaws and limitations of your business through any SEO tool, a software or a human expert. Without an SEO strategy, it is difficult for your business to have a reputable online presence.

8.    Your social media marketing campaigns do not bore fruits

If you allow your content to be shareable and have created several social media marketing campaigns, you must be expecting good results. However, if you do not end up with one, know that you lack somewhere at SEO. With increasing competitors and toughening business environment, it has become important to focus on SEO. A focused SEO strategy is the one that is linked to all the domains and aspects of your business. Having that created will end you up with sweet fruits.

Final Thoughts

It is easy to know when your business needs SEO. All you need to do is keep an eye on the performance of your website. With rapidly changing trends and online business needs, you never know when someone takes your position. Staying aware of everything that’s happening in the online world helps you shape your SEO strategy accordingly. This way, you comply with SEO needs and requirements really well, which, in turn, delivers higher profits and ROI for your business.