How To Find A Good SEO Expert

SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to how your online business ranks on search engines. If you have good SEO, then your website will rank highly and will be easier to find on the search engines. If your SEO isn’t ideal, then your website won’t pop up on the search engine results page and will be that much more difficult to find via search. 

So this begs the common question, “how do I improve my SEO?” Well, chances are, SEO is not your forte. As a business owner, you know all of the ins and outs of how to run your business. No one can tell you otherwise. However, SEO is a different ballgame.

You would trust an accountant to keep a record of all of your financials and advise you on what you can and can’t afford. The same goes for SEO. You want to hire a professional. You want to find a good SEO expert that can lay things out for you and show you how to improve your search engine rankings so that your customers can quickly locate your website and become more inclined to make a purchase online. 

This is a “how-to” guide that provides advice and instructions on how to find a good SEO expert so that you can hit the ground running on your SEO. 

Ask the Right Questions

When choosing a reputable SEO expert, asking the right questions is always highly recommended. Lots of business owners resort to Google for their common questions about SEO rather than seeking assistance from an SEO consultant or SEO agency. 

Yes, Google is the nucleus of the world’s source of information. Just about any question that you have can be answered by asking Google. Many people search for “best SEO’s in my area” or “best SEO consultants for small businesses.” Google will take these high ranking keywords and provide many helpful results. 

However, these answers may not tailor to your specific business. Every business is different and requires a unique SEO approach. The only way to fully develop this approach and get the results that you want would be to put your trust in an SEO expert.    

If you finally do find an SEO expert, then you must have a sit-down discussion about your overall SEO goals. Why do you want SEO? What kind of keywords do you want to rank for? What areas do you want to accentuate? Asking yourself the right questions and taking all of the factors into consideration is where the communication process will begin to build when discussing with your SEO expert. 

From there, you can go ahead and ask your SEO expert about how you can go about accomplishing these SEO goals. Some common questions to ask your SEO expert include:

1. How do I get more local customers?
2. Where does SEO come into play when reaching local customers?
3. We’re trying to boost revenue and drive sales. How do we do this with SEO?
4. How can we boost downloads and free sign-ups or free trials using SEO?
5. How long will it take for my business to rank on the 1st Google results page?
6. What kind of social media SEO campaigns do you suggest for my business?
7. How much does SEO cost?
8. How important are blog posts?
9. How many posts should I do each week?
10. How do I keep track of my search engine rankings? 
11. What process are you going to use to accomplish my SEO goals?
12. Why do you use this SEO process in particular?
13. What are your communication and reporting processes?
14. What type of work and resources will you have to commit to internally?
15. Do you factor in content marketing services? 
16. How does Google rank search results, and how do you influence them? 

A knowledgeable and experienced SEO expert will answer all of these questions and provide an in-depth SEO marketing strategy to improve rankings and drive more traffic to your website. They will also offer a much more customized SEO approach than if you were to conduct an organic search on Google. 

Make Sure That SEO Is Right For You

According to CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin, SEO is highly competitive and requires a lot of time, money, and energy. The first page of search results on the Google Index gets 95% of the clicks. The top three or four results get about 70% of clicks. 

To get your business to reach these goals takes a lot of work. So unless you have the manpower and necessary budget to engage your SEO correctly, then it may not be very valuable in the long term. To go from ranking on the sixth or seventh page to the bottom of the third page may seem like a huge leap of progress. However, it requires a lot of time and money. 

So it’s really up for you to decide where the value of this lies. Do you want to spend the money? Do you want to take the time? Do you want to hire an SEO expert to handle these needs? You must have the budget and energy to commit to improving your SEO up to these standards (and beyond). Consider your options based on these factors.   

Setting the right goals is essential to the SEO process and can even help you to determine if expanding on your SEO is the right move for you. If you do decide to create a budget for SEO efforts, then hire a professional SEO expert to assist you.