Do You Really Need to Go Pro?

A lot of small business owners and marketing managers sit on the fence for a long time about committing to SEO and content marketing.

They dabble with amateur help and publish mundane material that doesn’t fulfill expectations.  This lack of commitment to excellence in their business is a top lead and revenue killer. They may never fully commit to a using an Advanced SEO Pro to push towards market leadership.  Without that optimal effort, their business languishes in low visibility, leads and sales revenue.

There are a lot of misconceptions about how to approach SEO and what’s most important. There is an overemphasis on details and technical tricks while the big picture value generation (where success is) gets overlooked.

What do SEO Consultants Do?

An SEO consultant may provide a range of services, some advanced, which may be necessary to bring your web content to a competitive and powerful level. After all, you’re competing against big companies with big financial resources (million dollar ad budgets).  They may do more than provide reviews, recommendations and fixes.  For some talented SEO Pros, they may contribute to content generation and outreach activities.

1. SEO Audits and Recommendations: This involves an important comprehensive analysis of a client’s digital marketing challenge and SEO challenge. Brand research too helps SEOs understand what the messaging is and what content topics, treatments, keywords and messaging will encourage bloggers and journalists to link to your site. SEO Research: consultants use a variety of tools and data sources to conduct competitor analysis, keyword selection, content topics, content gaps, and content types and styles, which resonate with both users and Google’s ranking algorithm.
   Skills required: Analytical skills, knowledge of SEO research tools, and data analysis (e.g., Google analytics, ahrefs software, spreadsheets).
2. On-Page Optimization: SEO consultants review the website’s content, pillar and cluster pages, keyword usage, related words, title tags, h1 tags, anchor text, meta tags, content structure and the flow of copywriting to ensure it is optimal for Google rankings and user impact and engagement.  Issues and opportunities are brought out in a comprehensive audit.
   Skills required: Technical SEO knowledge, HTML/CSS coding skills, and content optimization.
3. Link Building: SEO consultants help to increase the website’s EEAT credibility by acquiring high-quality backlinks from industry-relevant authoritative websites. This involves outreach, content creation, and relationship building.
   Skills required: Outreach skills, content creation, and engagement with bloggers, journalists and publishers.
4. Content Creation: SEO consultants are frequently involved in creating high-quality content that is powerful, expert level, engaging and keyword/topically relevant enough to compete in today’s intensely competitive rankings. This content includes marketing pages, blog posts, articles, infographics, and videos, and even guest posting.
   Skills required: Copywriting, content creation, and optimization.
5. Technical SEO:  Analyzing, Identifying, testing and fixing technical issues that affect the website’s visibility and performance, such as broken links, duplicate content, and site speed. Core metrics, UX design, coding issues, duplicate content, backlink analysis, and other issues that are difficult to detect are discovered and managed via diagnostic tools.
   Skills required: Technical SEO knowledge, HTML/CSS coding skills, and troubleshooting skills.
6. Local SEO: SEO consultants advise on small business presence in local oriented searches. Google My Business optimization, local citations, relationship building, and local oriented content is planned, designed and published.
   Skills required: Local SEO knowledge, citation building, and Google My Business optimization.
7. Web Analytics and Reports: Using Google Analytics, ahefs software, and other traffic and funnel analytics tools help track and measure rankings, reach, traffic, impact, engagement, conversions, and lifetime value.
   Skills required: Analytics skills, data analysis, and reporting.
8. Lead Conversion Optimization:  SEO doesn’t achieve full value until customer lead and sales revenue increase. SEO analysts must discover issues that are resulting in low engagement and conversion rates and low customer lifetime value.
   Skills required: Analytics skills, data analysis, and reporting.
9. Social Media Optimization: Often social media will be used as an adjunct tool to increase visibility and engagement of published content. Social media profiles will synced to SEO to provide validation and support for the SEO strategy.
   Skills required: Social media optimization knowledge, social media engagement, social skills, creativity, content creation, and optimization.

Decision Time: Agencies or Experts?

SEO/Content agencies often emphasize a clutter of potential capabilities to distract you from the real core services that actually matter. The rest, which they’re promoting, is window dressing which adds billable hours. From Toronto to Boston to  Silicon Valley, it’s often a scam, but mostly to distract you from the core specialized search engine optimization services, which they don’t do well. Often, they will require big money to basically buy (PR, links, advertising) that should arise from a well-conceived and supported digital marketing effort.

Without approaching content planning and generation strategically from a laser-clear value proposition/branding point of view, all the keywordism, technical buzz, aggressive techniques and calls to action don’t generate impact, engagement and leads.

Working with an SEO Consultant helps you get the big picture right. One of the key skills of an SEO consultant is to interview and work with your sales team and product experts.  Because few SEO service providers are client product experts initially — we must learn your business and the desires and intent of customer prospects and the preferences of your current customers.

I’ve worked with companies with very advanced technologies and product offerings with specialized customer bases, and it can be a struggle to understand the needed value proposition from customer’s point of view. Sometimes, clients can’t help you understand it.  The mental gymnastics required is exhausting and few have the stamina to suffer through that. It takes some time to understand the culture, preferences, prejudices, and specific needs of your target audience. And to truly understand your company’s product and brand too.

Here’s the Key Serious SEO Consulting Capabilities to look for:

1. experience in building big SEO successes for a mix of companies
2. experience within several digital marketing agencies
3. experience in your specific business
4. strong comprehension to understand your business and strong writing skills to express your UVP well
5. has authored books on SEO and Content Strategy
6. experience in conducting digital marketing audits thus being able to understand well how their work fits into your digital marketing strategy
7. ability to use SEO to add value to your complete marketing mix and all your marketing channels
8. conduct in-depth keyword research and topic opportunities
9. skill, creativity, and persuasiveness in copywriting
10. ability to plan and execute a complex SEO strategy for massive gains in traffic and leads
11. experience with a branding agency and ability to understand branding and how you’re branding your product/service
12. willingness to optimize existing site content to keep it fresh and producing customers
13. creating pillar content that is evergreen and will stand the test of time (producing millions of visitors over several years)
14. scan, investigate and fix technical SEO issues such as user experience, core metrics, server performance reports.
15. research and discover innovations in content design, content delivery, and content promotion
16. actively keep up on ranking changes
17. talent and flexibility to innovate and improve content impact and engagement
18. innovate to promote shareability of content, engaging industry journalists, bloggers and influencers

What was the Question Again?

Yes, back to the original question, “do you need an SEO consultant?” Based on the above, a talented, expert SEO consultant provides important guidance which helps you take search engine optimization and content development to help you compete and make your brand shine on Google.

Questions to Ask:

To get yourself in the right frame of mind to make better decisions, think about these things:

• how ambitious are you and do you want success?
• do you respect your business enough to go first class?
• do you respect other’s expertise?
• are you willing to fund success?
• is a marketing consultant’s ability to add value to your full marketing efforts meaningful?
• do you want to micromanage an amateur?
• are the opportunities you’re missing worth more than what you’re about to do?

When Should You Hire An SEO Pro?

• when you need a leap in traffic, leads, lead quality, and brand lift
• when you’ve rebranded
• when you’re pouring money into a paid marketing campaign
• when you want to revamp your content strategy
• when you’re scaling up your business
• when there’s an opportunity to win your market
• when you’ve found some venture capital

Advanced SEO Services

By now, you might know I’m sincere and likely well qualified to help you optimize your content.  Contact me at 416 998 6246 to discuss.  I’m looking forward to speaking with you.