Page 2 of Google search results is a very lonely place. Hardly anybody goes there – only 0.78% of searchers, to be more precise. No wonder it’s a subject of one of the longest-running jokes in the SEO industry, saying that this location is the best place to hide a dead body.
On the other hand, the top 3 Google search results manage to scoop a staggering 75.1% of all clicks, while most users don’t even scroll past the 5th result.
These couple of stats make a pretty strong case for why you should do everything in your power to get on the first page of Google, as that will result in more traffic, more clicks, more conversions, and subsequently, generating more revenue.
Sounds great, right?
Now that you understand the importance of Google rankings let’s discuss how you can catapult your website to the first page of Google search results and what steps you should take to achieve that goal, and why an SEO consultant role is crucial for the entire process.
A Powerful Three Letter Word
SEO or search engine optimization is a set of marketing activities whose purpose is to help you improve the visibility of your website on search engines by boosting its rankings.
As a result, SEO allows you to organically reach your target audience and increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to your website.
Simply put, if you want to stay top of mind with your audience and potential customers, your website has to be well-optimized in such a manner that it provides clear and relevant answers to their questions and effective solutions to their pain points.
Google is practically an intermediary between you and searchers, and its main concern is providing people who use it with the best and most relevant search results fast.
This means that you should know Google’s rules and guidelines in order to best optimize your content so that the search engine can serve the most relevant resources for every individual search and provide an exceptional user experience. By doing so, you’ll be rewarded with top ranking and a surge in high-quality traffic you can easily convert.
The trouble lies in the fact that there are literally millions of websites writing about the same or similar topics, and all of them are your competitors that you have to outperform in order to rank above them. And that’s where SEO comes in.
What Is SEO Consulting?
It’s obvious from our brief definition of SEO why you should implement this discipline into your digital marketing strategy.
However, we should explain how it works in greater detail so that you can understand why you absolutely need an SEO consultant if you want to successfully leverage the power of search engines for increasing brand awareness and putting your content in front of the right people’s eyes.
SEO consulting provides a wide array of SEO services specifically tailored to your website or company, and since optimizing your content for search engines is a complex task, it’s best to hire an expert to build a strategy and manage the entire process.
Basically, an SEO consultant is a professional who will make sure your website is optimized according to Google’s guidelines. It’s their job to improve your search engine rankings and visibility and bring you high-quality traffic.
To understand to which extent this job is challenging, we’ll mention some of the things your new SEO expert will be responsible for.
On-Page vs. Off-Page vs. Technical SEO
First of all, SEO can be categorized into three types:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO.
A comprehensive, well-rounded SEO strategy has to contain all three aspects. Your SEO consultant has to be familiar with all of them to identify the areas that require improvement.
On-Page SEO
This approach refers to the optimizations you make on every individual web page on your site in an attempt to help search engines better understand and rank your content.
These include creating well-researched, relevant, high-quality content, finding the best keywords for every page and piece of content, optimizing title tags, images, meta tags, as well as creating internal links.
The point is in showing that your website is a valuable and educational resource that offers its visitors answers to their questions.
Off-Page SEO
The goal of these techniques is to establish the reputation of your website and strengthen its relationships with other websites.
Link building is considered the main off-page tactic since it’s the best way to display trust signals to Google and show that reputable and trustworthy sites vouch for the quality of your content.
Other tactics include content marketing, social media, obtaining reviews, being featured on podcasts, and building local citations, to name just a few.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO has the purpose of improving your website’s structure, foundation, architecture, and subsequently, its readability in order to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index it.
All this means that your visitors will be able to navigate your website effortlessly and find what they’re looking for quickly and without clicking back and forth. As a result, your website will provide a great user experience, and we’ve already explained why it’s Google’s top priority.
Even if you’re a bit familiar with some of these techniques, it’s clear that for the success of your entire digital marketing strategy, you need an SEO consultant who will coordinate this strategy and ensure your website is well positioned in searches.
What Are an SEO Consultant’s Responsibilities?
Search engine optimization is like a puzzle.
Every single part has to fit in perfectly in order for your site to climb to the top of Google search results, and what’s even more important, stay there.
That’s why your SEO consultant will have to perform a number of tasks and activities on a daily basis.
To additionally illustrate the importance of having an experienced SEO consultant on your team, we’ll mention some of them.
- Gain a deep understanding of your industry and target audience. This includes who your competitors are, what tactics they use, and how successful they are. This way, they will be able to determine every step of your SEO strategy.
- Conduct keyword research. Once they identify your target audience and direct competitors, your SEO consultant will conduct keyword research and find the words and phrases your potential website visitors use when looking for solutions to their problems. But, it’s not only what your audience is searching for in Google as other factors, such as search volume and keyword difficulty, play an important role too.
- Optimize for mobile. Your website has to display properly on screens of all sizes in order to adhere to Google’s mobile-first index. Don’t forget that more than 50% of search traffic comes from mobile devices, and it’s very likely that your visitors access your blog posts from their smartphones.
- Stay up to speed with the next Google algorithm update. Whenever the search engine giant rolls out a new core update, website traffic fluctuates. Sometimes, your numbers will surge, and at other times it will plunge. Your SEO consultant will monitor these updates and shifts and ensure that your website doesn’t suffer a huge blow.
- Create content and link-building strategies. Even though you might be an expert in your field, you still need some help when it comes to picking relevant topics that will resonate with your audience, creating optimized content, and promoting it.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as an SEO consultant’s job is complex and challenging, which is why you shouldn’t do it yourself or task your marketing team with it if you want to see some results in terms of traffic, rankings, and conversion rates.
Only a dedicated and experienced professional can implement and manage all the SEO activities on your website successfully.
What to Look for in an SEO Consultant
Now that we’ve established that you need an SEO consultant, it would be a good idea to discuss what to look for in your perfect hire.
First of all, you need a seasoned SEO specialist with a lot of experience in all three aspects of search engine optimizations. Their portfolio should list not only their previous clients and projects but also their track record. Client references and testimonials are another very important factor that will help you make the right decision.
Secondly, expertise in all three aspects of SEO is also a must because it will be their task to optimize everything on your website, including content, meta tags, architecture, and speed. That’s why they need versatility.
Finally, opt for the person with excellent communication skills because it will be their responsibility to create an SEO strategy, effectively communicate what changes and improvements have to be made, give tasks to content writers, and generally monitor the implementation of the strategy.
There are many benefits that hiring an SEO consultant can bring to your company, and now that you’re familiar with the ins and outs of this profession, you can see that it’s a worthwhile investment.
