How will people get to your website? Will they type your address directly? Probably not. That’s where search engines come in. The search engines take all the content of the internet and digest it into results for people who need answers.
Think about the search engine’s job. It’s their goal to give you the exact answer you are looking for as the first result for any search you do. It’s a tall order considering the amount of information on the internet. The search engine will look through your site and make a judgment call about what your site is about. This is why you need SEO.
What does an SEO consultant do?
What an SEO consultant will do is look at your business, ask the right questions then present your site in a way that makes it easy for the search engines to determine what you do. If your site, because of the way it’s written, cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search.
What to look for in a consultant:
Failure to return your emails or phone calls during the choosing phase is an automatic fail. If they can’t return your calls when you are interviewing them, then do you really expect them to return your calls after they have your money?
How will an SEO consultant measure success?
The consultant should have BUSINESS GOAL-BASED success criteria. Most of the time consultants will want to measure success based on an increase in traffic. Just measuring an increase in traffic does not mean that they are being effective. For example, our SEO guru works with a number of medical office clients. Simply tracking website hits for them is not enough. They measure the increase in phone calls that come from the web. The clinic owner looks at the numbers each month and is looking for continuous improvement.
You could have a 10,000% increase in hits to the website but if it does not generate extra sales then you are wasting your money. Make sure you have a clear way to measure success that equates to more money in your pocket as the business owner. Additionally, you should come up with a regular schedule to speak with your SEO consultant about what they did in the previous period and what they will do in the next cycle.
Link building. How will they promote your business?
In the past just getting links built to your website without any care for quality was enough to get your website ranked highly. However, times have changed and Google has been fighting spammy links by downranking the offending sites. Make sure to ask for a sample of the links built to your website. If they look like spam then drop the SEO and if your contract allows it, don’t pay them.
Finally…
make sure you have clear expectations about what the SEO can do for you. Most skilled SEO companies can give you a general idea of how difficult it will be to rank for certain keywords. Be very wary of anyone who guarantees you they can rank your site number one for any keyword. Usually, Google takes 6 weeks to index major changes to sites. We have seen faster results when building really great links to sites with low competition but don’t expect it.
