While it’s great for your company’s website to look good, it also needs to be pulling its weight by attracting targeted visitors and turning them into customers. If your Internet business is not where it should be, it could be time to hire an SEO expert to consult with you and help turn your business around.
There are many competitors in the SEO market today, so it helps to have an idea what to look for. When looking for an SEO expert, consider the following.
- Number of Years of SEO experiences – Experience in marketing is good, but you also want someone who has years of experience experimenting with different types of SEO tactics to work on your site. Every site is different and it needs someone with experience to know what to try if plan A doesn’t succeed.
- Complete Knowledge of 3 SEO Levels – SEO has three different levels, technical, on-page optimization and off-page optimization. Your company needs someone who will take this three pronged approach and maximize the success of your website.
- Proven Success Record in SEO – Ask for references of happy clients to prove that the company you are considering can walk the walk they have been talking. Get current references and follow up with them to find out how the SEO you’re considering actually helped them out.
- Old Fashioned Marketing Know How – Yes a website is more technical than the way business was done in the past, but once you get past that, it’s really a lot like traditional marketing. Your content, press releases, and tactics still should outline features and benefits and have a call to action.
- Wide spectrum of knowledge – While the tech heads of the world are great to have on your side, they should also understand psychology, sociology, product knowledge, business models and oh so much more. SEO experts have to be jacks of all trades and masters of them too.
- Vision of the Bigger Picture – Make sure that the SEO expert you’re considering is seeing what you need and ultimately want, be it more conversions, higher sales per customer or simply better exposure. Don’t let them focus on just achieving a certain rank on the search engines.
- A Good Fit With Your Company’s Culture – The SEO experts you hire should not just be working with IT but marketing, sales, customer service and management. The ability to blend in and communicate effectively with all areas of your company is important.
- Fantastic Relay of ideas – Yes, the person you have working with you needs to be able to speak well. Specifically, he or she should be able to communicate why changes need to be made to all those involved.
- Love of the game – The effective SEO has a love of his business and finds a way to work around any rough bumps in the road. Granted, your company can’t be the one putting up those road blocks in the first place if you want to achieve excellent results from your expert.
- New Knowledge – You want an SEO expert who is still learning and is curious about your company and the ways that the Internet can help you grow. You don’t want someone who has old knowledge that ceased growing five years back.
If you follow the tips above, you are more than likely to get paired up with the right SEO expert for your company. Be sure to request progress reports from the company you decide to hire. If you are with a good SEO expert you should start to see changes in your website ranking within one month.
