Should You Hire a Full-Time SEO or Hire an SEO Consultant
SEO is an indispensable aspect of every successful digital marketing strategy. If you want to attract high-quality traffic to your website organically, search engine optimization is a must. Generally speaking, with the help of SEO, you can reach your target audience, get them to visit your website, engage them, and finally encourage them to convert.
It’s obvious that this is a set of versatile and powerful tactics that can transform your website from a lonely and quiet place that rarely sees a visitor to a thriving and buzzing corner of the web. Even though you and your team might know a bit about search engine optimization, you won't get very far without a dedicated specialist well-versed in different aspects of SEO.
In other words, you do need a seasoned professional whose responsibility will be to create your SEO strategy, execute it, and monitor results. Still, before discussing whether you should hire someone to manage your SEO full-time or hire an SEO expert who will act as an external consultant and weigh your options, it’s a good idea to explain why a DIY approach isn’t recommended.
SEO Is Everything
The very fact that you have built a website and filled it with content doesn’t mean that you’ll get a surge in traffic. Moreover, the odds are that your target audience doesn’t even have any idea that your website exists. Search engine optimization will improve your website's visibility in search results and attract potential visitors to check it out.
Although there are some pretty straightforward steps you can take to improve your presence, the truth is that SEO requires a lot of time and skill. We’re talking about creating and optimizing content, conducting keyword research, optimizing tags and images, building links, site mapping, URL structuring, and a number of other methods.
Your ultimate goal should be to get to the top of Google search results because that’s how you’ll get noticed and generate a lot of traffic. The no. 1 result in Google scores almost 32% of all clicks, which is amazing in terms of traffic and conversions.
But it’s not enough to simply get searchers to visit your website—you need to offer them relevant, valuable content if you want them to stick around, come again, and ultimately subscribe or purchase from you.
By implementing effective SEO tactics, you can attract and engage your visitors and provide them with an exceptional user experience.
This way, your website will gradually evolve into a relevant and trustworthy source of information, and that’s what makes SEO a worthwhile investment.
But, for this to happen, you need an SEO specialist who knows the tricks of the trade.
SEO Is Resource Intensive
Search engine optimization consists of a number of very different tasks that have to be coordinated.
Since many of these tasks require a lot of time, it’s best to leave them to professionals so that you can focus on your job—running your business.
For example, content creation and optimization isn’t something that you can do as a side gig in your spare time. Regardless of your expertise in a particular field, it’s not enough to craft relevant and engaging content that will captivate readers’ attention.
Similarly, there are many minuscule optimization tasks that would take a lot of time to complete.
Generally speaking, SEO isn’t something you can do every once in a while if you want to see results. It’s an approach that requires persistent efforts to succeed.
Bad SEO Is Worse Than No SEO
If you think that scratching the surface and implementing only a couple of SEO tactics is enough for starters, you’re wrong.
Poorly executed SEO can do substantial damage to your website, and some mistakes might even get you penalized.
It takes time before your SEO efforts start yielding results, so it can be tempting to take a shortcut and try to speed up the process. By opting for deceptive methods, such as content scraping, using duplicate content, keyword stuffing, or cloaking, some website owners try to trick their way into improving their rankings.
This is called black hat SEO, and it’s a big no-no in Google’s books.
But Google easily detects those attempts and punishes the sites by tanking their rankings, deindexing their web pages, and removing them from the search results completely.
In this sense, it’s much safer not to use any SEO at all because although you won’t see any improvement in your rankings and traffic, at least you won’t do any damage either.
Google insists on using only white-hat tactics, such as producing superb content, delivering exceptional user experience, making your website mobile-friendly, and generally turning it into a valuable resource your audience will find helpful and useful.
By hiring an SEO specialist, you’ll ensure that all your SEO efforts are transparent and in compliance with Google SEO guidelines.
If you already made a mistake and resorted to some of these shady tactics, an SEO professional can help you recover from the penalty and make a fresh start toward better rankings.
Don’t Forget Core Updates
SEO is a very dynamic and fluid strategy.
It doesn’t allow you to remain set in your ways.
Google famously rolls out a couple of core updates several times a year. Some of these updates are minor, and they don’t affect your website, but others can easily lead to a drop in rankings or a decline in traffic.
By having someone skilled to monitor these changes and keep up with the latest trends, you can be sure that everything on your website will be tweaked to best endure a potential blow caused by a core update.
Great SEO Generates Leads
SEO is also a powerful strategy in terms of generating leads and driving sales.
But only if done right.
A dedicated SEO professional will be able to grow your sales funnel, generate new sales leads, guide them through their buyer’s journey, and finally, bringing you some new clients.
It might sound straightforward, but all this requires a lot of skill and experience, which is why you shouldn’t waste your time and money trying to do this yourself. Training your existing employees is also a time-consuming and expensive method.
To save money and speed up the entire process and hire someone who knows how this strategy works.
Should You Hire a Full-Time SEO or a Consultant?
By now, you already know why you shouldn’t experiment with DIY SEO.
But does that mean you should hire a full-time SEO professional to be on your team? Or is it better to opt for an SEO expert who will provide their services on the clock?
Full-Time SEO
One of the biggest benefits of having an in-house SEO specialist is their availability and dedication to your website and ongoing project.
However, although SEO is a long-term strategy that consists of several different tasks, there will be some days when you won’t need to work on optimizing your website or publishing new content.
From that point of view, we can conclude that hiring an in-house SEO specialist isn’t exactly cost-effective.
Another issue is that it can be very difficult to find an all-around SEO specialist capable of fulfilling all your SEO needs. SEO is a fairly broad field, encompassing on-page, off-page, and technical SEO, and not many SEO professionals specialize in the three aspects.
SEO Consultant
An SEO consultant is an expert in search engine optimization who offers expert advice on your SEO strategy. This term might refer to an individual offering consulting services or a group of consultants joining an agency providing SEO consultancy services.
As experts, they’re up to speed on the latest industry trends and Google core updates, which means that you can rely on them to ensure that your website will be compliant and well-optimized.
Another upside of working with an SEO consultant is that they won’t be on your payroll. You’ll pay them only for the work they do on your website. This is a cost-effective solution since they can identify the areas of your SEO that need improvement and focus on them.
A seasoned SEO consultant is very well aware that search optimization doesn’t only mean improving their clients’ rankings and generating more search traffic. They’re also focused on helping their clients get more leads and improve sales conversions.
Finally, because they work with multiple clients, they’re very well connected with other marketers, publishers, and websites, which is handy for link-building purposes.
Search engine optimization is an integral part of every modern marketing strategy, which makes it a valuable investment. Understanding whether your website needs a full-time SEO or an SEO expert is important as it will allow you to control your expenses and choose the best and most cost-effective option that won’t burden your budget and will still yield results.
I run BeFound SEO in Dublin.