In today’s digital environment, an organization’s Web presence is not nice to have, but is instead a must have.
In the market that has millions of websites, most companies have problems with visibility.
This is why an SEO marketing consultant is very useful at this point. An SEO consultant assists the enterprise
in a web site enhancement, increasing its popularity among Internet users and, finally, enhancing the enterprise’s revenues.
In this article I will explain how SEO consultants assist companies and why their services are so important in the current environment.
Common SEO Challenges Faced by Businesses:
Lack of Knowledge: Unfortunately, 90 percent of business owners do not possess the detailed knowledge about the search engine algorithms.
Time-Consuming: SEO is not a one-time fix. It could be time consuming, it needs constant monitoring,
frequent changes and it definitely needs a proactive approach.
Algorithm Changes: Google and other search engines change their algorithms regularly and having to stay
updated on them can be quite a problem especially if you do not have the help from an expert.
These barriers can greatly cause confusion to businesses and make them unsure of where to begin. Without a proper enquiry, their website can stay concealed which results in loss making situations.
What Happens When SEO Is Ignored?
Low Website Traffic: If the business page is not following Search Engine Optimization to channel the content and layout of its website, the site will not attract organic traffic. This means relying solely on paid ads, which is probably expensive in the end since it’s a downside of small companies.
Decreased Brand Awareness: It means without effective SEO, your business loses a chance to attract the attention of people who are searching for the particular products or services you provide.
Falling Behind Competitors: The competitors who fund their SEO efforts will always stay ahead ranking and taking a bigger slice of your pie.
Fact: In the same article, other lead sources show that SEO leads are 8.5 times more likely to convert compared to outbound leads such as direct mail or print advertisements. Although you are on the losing end of simply losing traffic, its a loss of leads and conversion as well.
How an SEO Marketing Consultant Can Help
This is actually where an SEO marketing consultant comes into play. They understand which are the proper tactics to increase your online presence.
1. Audit Your Current Website
The implementation process of an SEO consultant begins with an assessment of the website. It entails establishing what your site is doing now in terms of SEO, thing which is not well with your site in terms of its technical characteristics (like the loading speed or broken links), and examining its on-site SEO factors like the meta tags & headers, or the content format.
2. Keyword Research
The terms and phrases that the consultants use are those that your target audience will use to look for your products or services. It focuses on inserting these keywords to your website naturally without appearing spammy in order to rank high on SERPs.
Example: That is why if you are the owner of a fitness business, phrases like ‘personal trainer near me’, ‘home workout plans”, ‘best gym routines’ can be the phrases used by your potential audience.
3. On-Page Optimization
Once the keywords are defined the consultant will then proceed to work on the On page optimization particularly on your website. This is making changes to the meta description, using header tags appropriately, using the appropriate images, and ensuring that the website is mobile friendly.
Fact: Statistics on the same reveal that more than half of the web traffic comes from mobile devices (Source: Statista). It is very important to make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices to increase your chances of ranking high.
4. Content Strategy
An SEO marketing consultant will guide you in achieving a content plan that deals with the audience’s need and search engine goals.
They will:
Blogging or article writing – Blog post, article or a specific landing page creation by providing focus keywords.
Make sure content brings something new to the reader, which will help boost engagement, and therefore increase the chances of ranking higher.
You have to contribute to constructing internal linking structures to increase site’s authority and enhance accessibility.
5. Link building is an off-page practice that is performed to obtain other websites’ hyperlinks to your own site.
Off page SEO aims at the quality links pointing to your website sources from other quality site of the internet. Many SEO consultants have the know-how of how to design a link building campaign that incorporates guest posting, reaching out to other blog sites and the use of social media to earn links.
6. Supervision and control and Implementation of changes.
In other words, SEO is not a one-time kind of thing that, when done, can be left alone for sometime. A consultant tracks your website through the tools such as Google Analytics, Search Console among others. They focus on quantitative targets such as the organic traffic, bounce rates, and conversion rates which the need to be optimized.
Fun fact: SEO is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing since organic search contributes towards a third of website traffic according to BrightEdge.