How to Hire an SEO Consultant

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, refers to a collection of strategies used to optimize a website so that potential customers, your target audience, will be able to find you more easily online. Good SEO makes it easier for the Google search engine to index your site, makes your site more relevant to the needs of your target audience, and thus gains you wider exposure and user engagement.

As of 2020, a mind-boggling 7 billion Google search queries are logged every day according to Internet Live Stats. That’s 80,000 per second, and the number continues to grow. That’s why any business or non-profit today with an online presence needs to be concerned about SEO.

As a savvy business owner, you know that your time is valuable and you need to focus on the overall expansion and establishment of your business. That’s why you’ve decided to work with a professional SEO consultant. You’ve heard that SEO scams abound, but you also know that there are plenty of real pros out there who know their stuff and produce great results for their clients. So what is the best way to find the right SEO expert or agency for your business?

Step One | Prepare Yourself – Get a Basic Knowledge of SEO

It’s going to be hard to select the right person for the job if you don’t know something about SEO yourself, any more than you can hit the bull’s eye if you don’t know what you are aiming for. Choosing the wrong SEO consultant can waste a lot of time and money. Contracting with an
person who is unqualified or uses faulty or unethical methods can result in penalties rather than gains for your site.

There are many free tutorials online that can quickly acquaint you with the fundamentals of the three areas involved in SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical. You will also want to gain some understanding of keywords, which are the words and phrases that potential customers might use in a Google search for your product or service. While your SEO expert will be the one to design and carry out the actual keyword strategy, it will be helpful if you as the principal stakeholder can contribute feedback on the keywords to be used. You are the one with a deeper understanding of your industry niche, your brand image, and your company’s core values and goals.

You don’t need to understand every detail of these topics, just enough so that you can ask relevant interview questions and understand the candidates’ responses. You’ll also need this knowledge in order to monitor the work of your SEO consultant and to understand whether progress is being made.

You should also be familiar with the difference between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which refers to paid online advertising like pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Many companies work on both SEO and SEM at the same time, utilizing the SEM paid adverts for immediate, faster results, while building their SEO for the long-term payoff. These two aspects of online marketing both utilize keywords and need to be approached with a unified strategy.

Step Two | Finding Potential SEO Services Candidates

A well-qualified SEO professional will have experience in the industry, good references, and the know-how to design a multi-dimensional strategy for your website.

One of the first ways to locate potential SEO consultants is to ask other business friends for recommendations. If they’ve worked with an SEO company or specialist that has delivered good results, you may want to check them out for your company. Another way to connect with possible candidates is by attending an SEO or search marketing conference or seminar, where you can meet professionals face-to-face and see who might fit the bill for your business.

You will need to decide whether you want to hire an actual SEO agency to do your work, or find a single expert or a freelancer online. The advantages of hiring an established and well-known agency are that they usually have a complete team of people who can tackle all the different aspects involved in optimizing your site and improving your ranking. And if they are well-known and have good reviews, chances are they know how to do a good job. On the other hand, working with an agency can be less personal, and large agencies can be too costly for the budget of a small local business.

Local or family firms often opt for a freelancer or single SEO expert, for more personal and affordable service. With freelancers, some are concerned about scams or incompetence, reasoning that if the person were any good they would have a job with a large firm. However, the fact is that most freelancers choose that route because it gives them a flexible schedule and often allows them to earn more than working for a company. “The proof is in the pudding,” and checking out their reviews and references should give you a clear idea of their competency. Many freelancers also network with other qualified individuals in the industry such as SEO content creators or web builders, so that they have a team that works according to the need, and does not require a fulltime salary. You can find self-employed or small-size SEO agencies by googling SEO in your city and start with the individuals who have ranked their own websites in the top positions on page one, as well as looking at reviews on sites such as Upwork or Thumbtack.

Step Three | Interviewing and Hiring the Right SEO Expert 

•  Look for someone with experience. Search Engine Optimization is a new and fast-developing industry, with a constantly changing web landscape. This is one of those professions where the best people are those who apprenticed with another successful expert, or who are self-taught and have top results. There are some excellent SEO education courses available today that can be helpful; however, in this field, taking courses is not a substitute for actual work experience in how the multitude of details and different factors work together to optimize for Google search.

You also want to choose someone who is currently working in the SEO field. The internet landscape and SEO methods and strategies are constantly morphing, and to get results your professional needs to be immersed and connected in that world.

• Has the candidate done SEO work in your industry?  While this is not a “must,” it can be helpful as the person will already be familiar with the type of work you do, the market, and effective keyword strategies to use. There are now SEO agencies and experts who work exclusively with lawyers, insurance agents, dentists, and other special industry niches.

Along the same lines, if you are a local business, you’ll want to look for an SEO with experience in optimizing for local search. If you have multiple branches, look for an SEO who has worked on multi-location websites. In other words, try to find someone who knows the territory and already has some understanding of what it takes to rank competitively in the Google search results for your industry and locations.

• Request references and check them out. After the interview, give their former clients a call and ask if the work was done well and produced the results they expected, how the communication flow went, and anything else important for your choice.
• Ask potential candidates to outline the general SEO strategies they use. This is where your personal understanding of SEO is going to be important. Just throw this topic out as an open-ended question, and then check that they say something about the following areas:
• On-page SEO, including optimized, quality content creation using keywords and heading tags, along with interesting media features, such as images and videos, all of which improve ranking according to Google algorithms.
• Technical SEO aspects such as meta descriptions, meta tags, creating a site map and understanding of how search engines crawl a site, as well as using strong URLs and alt-text.
• Off-page SEO, or link building. They should have experience in building legal, organic backlinks, as opposed to purchased backlinks, which Google now penalizes.  Have them explain the process and the methods they use to build these incoming links, and see if they make sense.

• Ask them to create a strategy outline for your site. This is a standard procedure for SEO hires. They should present a solid proposal that includes the three areas mentioned above, as well as their method for monitoring and reporting on the progress and results in terms of web traffic levels and conversion rates.

• Good communication skills. Finally, you want someone who is easy to communicate with, and who is a good fit for your company culture. It’s never a good idea to hire someone who will cause stress and strain for you or your staff.

• Set clear goals and responsibilities for the position. Take into consideration the recommendations of the candidate and what they feel is an attainable goal.

• Pricing is right. Most SEO’s require some upfront payment and then monthly fees, since SEO requires time and adjustment to take its full effect. At some point, the monthly contract expires and can be renewed. Sometimes fees will be “renewable monthly” as a guarantee of good service.

Things to Watch Out For When Choosing SEO Consultant Services

During the hiring process, there are a few things that should be viewed as a red flag or warning signal.

1. Black hat SEO techniques: These are methods that put your firm at risk, such as purchasing incoming links, using irrelevant links, plagiarizing content, keyword stuffing, and other use of content that is obviously trying to trick Google into ranking you higher. Don’t think you can outsmart the search engine, with today’s advanced algorithms that are searching for and recognize true authoritative content. These techniques can have the opposite effect and can incur a Google penalty or cause your site to be buried on the last page of search results.
2. Avoid anyone who promotes simplistic “SEO packages”: SEO is not a “one-size-fits-all” type of job. The very nature of SEO requires innovation, creativity, and leveraging your company’s unique and specific strengths. Contracting with a company or individual who offers a cheap “cookie-cutter” SEO package will not only be a waste of money, but most of all, a waste of valuable time that could be spent building the real search optimization you need to be successful and get results online.
3. Be wary of those who guarantee to place you in the number 1 position on Google, unless they can show you clear results of their current and former clients. There are very few SEO consultants who can reliably get these position-one listings, and they charge accordingly. However, for most competent SEO services, depending on the location and industry, it may be possible to accurately forecast placement on Google’s first page with sufficient investment and time, and page one results will result in a significant increase in both traffic and conversions.
4. Be careful about SEO’s who can’t respond to most of your questions with confidence. No one is perfect. But as an example, you may run across someone who claims to have done the SEO for a stunning website, but upon further examination, it turns out the person was actually just a member of the team that did the job, not the lead SEO strategist. A truly competent SEO will not be confused or flustered by questions, but most of the time, be able to respond comfortably and logically.

More Interview Questions for SEO Expert Job Candidates

Here are a few more possible topics and questions you can explore during interviews with prospective candidates.

• On the job application, request that they give you URLs for at least three websites that they have worked on, talk about their specific role in the job, and the results.
• What specific SEO strategies would they implement in order to improve your company’s website?
• Identify three on-page optimization methods they notice that you use already on your website.
• What main keywords do they suggest targeting, and why?
• Ask about the time frame for the results they expect to produce for you.
• What tools do they use for tracking SEO progress? What metrics do they use in reporting and why? Decide on a weekly or monthly reporting plan.
• How do they stay abreast of the latest in SEO methods and developments?

This may seem like a lot of detail, but since building SEO for your company is a long-term and enduring investment, it is well worth the time it takes to find the right person for the job, and the best fit for your situation.

When looking to work with the best SEO consultant services or Digital Marketing Agency, contact our experts today at support@socialmarketway.com to discuss your unique marketing needs and how to position your business website on page one for Google searches. We have stellar results with ranking proof, published case studies, as well as many testimonials of increased revenue and customers for our clients. With four offices in New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia and Maryland, we are here for your success.