The status of professional SEO consultant is reaching the forefront in every sector. In such a competitive market, SEO positioning has become one of the top priorities for companies who no longer doubt the importance of organic traffic from search engines in their business strategies.
In this article, we are going to touch upon what you should expect from an SEO expert and how to hire the right person to help your website reach the top positions in search results.
What is an SEO Consultant?
An SEO consultant is a professional who uses their own set of techniques, knowledge, and skills to help a company achieve its goals in terms of positioning, particularly on Google. Businesses hire such an expert to gain more qualified organic traffic to their websites. As a result, they achieve sustained growth for a specific project or for their overall brand.
SEO consulting services have always been part of the market. Yet, over the years, the profession has become more prominent. Constant changes to the algorithm, multiple positioning factors, and the significant amount of time it takes to get to know and understand them have made the demand for SEO specialists go steadily up.
Companies turn to professional SEO consultants for their extensive knowledge and experience in their area of expertise. Most of them know how to increase traffic to any website by utilising various techniques. However, not all are able to turn a website with no traffic at all into a reference in its own industry, which is an invaluable talent companies don’t fail to recognise.
What knowledge should a good SEO expert have?
It is one thing to know about SEO, and quite another to be an SEO expert. Anyone can ride a bicycle, but not everyone can win the Tour de France.
The same goes for SEO, where anyone can learn the rules of the game and apply them more or less correctly, but not everyone can reach the top positions on Google, all the more so in competitive sectors. This would be like winning the hardest mountain stage you could imagine.
For starters, a good SEO consultant should have a perfect grasp of the most fundamental aspects of search engine optimisation:
- On Page SEO: is the one that can be tinkered with and managed the most easily, as it relates to the elements of the website itself. The structure of the website, content optimisation, keyword research, and many other elements come into play here. An SEO expert should operate very confidently in this area, adapting their techniques and content to the situation at hand.
- Off Page SEO: describes the SEO efforts made outside of the website in question. It is just as important and On Page SEO, and possibly even more so. These techniques are strongly related to link building, which simply consists in creating links that point to the webpage as proof of its authority.
These two approaches are essential to search engine optimisation, which means a good SEO consultant should master both. They should also be prominent in various SEO techniques, as every sector has characteristics of its own. It doesn’t take the same exact method for every website to rank. For example, an ecommerce SEO consultant doesn’t rely on the same approach as a technical SEO consultant for a tech firm does.
What techniques should a good SEO consultant master?
- Keyword analysis: selecting the best keywords always affects the results directly, both in terms of ranking and in terms of traffic opportunities. A good SEO consultant should know how to carry out keyword research and choose the right expressions according to their client’s project.
- Link building: external linking determines the authority of a website, which in turn tells Google how well versed the website is in a given topic. Good link building speeds up a website’s growth process and increases its authority more rapidly as well, thus boosting organic traffic and customer acquisition.
- Analytics tools: in SEO, measuring is just as important as actually doing. SEO analytics tools allow us to know whether the actions we carry out are working and meeting our expectations. A good SEO consultant should therefore be proficient at Google Analytics, Search Console, Screaming Frog, SemRush, Ahrefs, and many more.
- Search engine algorithms: Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing, operate according to ever-evolving algorithms which are becoming increasingly complex and similar to the human mind. Understanding how they work and keeping up with any possible changes is crucial for an SEO consultant.
- Web architecture: On Page SEO ensures that a website’s structure is the best match for its own characteristics. Selecting the most appropriate architecture not only for Google, but also for the user, is instrumental in the success of any website. One with poor On Page SEO is not likely to rank high in the search results.
- Content: content is still king, which means that an SEO specialist must be able to create the most suitable content for a website. Content is a powerful ranking factor capable of attracting qualified users which, in the case of companies, may become potential customers.
- Trends: Ranking trends are constantly evolving, and what works today may not work tomorrow, which is exactly why, in marketing, it is so important to monitor and measure everything we do. Knowing the latest trends and even anticipating them by detecting early signs of change can set a website on a completely different path.
- Advice: any good SEO consultant, regardless of their specific sector, should know how to transmit their knowledge to their clients successfully. It is essential that they should know how to make others understand the path to follow. This means their communication skills should be excellent and conducive to collaborative work on various projects.
What skills should every SEO expert have?
In addition to the skills above, other elements make the difference between good and great SEO consulting services. Personal skills, for instance, make for better results as they condition the quality of the work to a significant extent. These include being:
- User-orientated: Google has become a neural network, gradually learning what users like and dislike. This means the puritanical approach to SEO of yesteryear is proving less and less effective, as it was tailored for the benefit of search engines. A good SEO consultant now knows that satisfying search intent and user needs is essential.
- Analytical: being an analytical and detail-oriented person is a must in SEO. Analysis plays an integral part in the planning, in the execution, and in measuring the results of an SEO strategy. Being able to perform a reliable analysis is what allows you to make the right call.
- Strategic: behind any well-positioned website always stands a talented strategist who knows how to keep ROI goals in mind. The SEO consultant is in charge of defining the strategy to follow in the short, medium, and long-term. If they cannot define a clear, precise, and sound strategy, achieving the objectives set will prove very difficult.
- Ambitious: a good SEO consultant is never satisfied, they always want more and more, nothing is ever enough. Even when they reach the top position, they want to keep working to achieve other milestones and remain an industry leader.
- Realistic: on the other hand, they should also be realistic. It may seem contradictory, but it really is not. The goal is to achieve the best possible results with the resources at their disposal, as no one can hope to reach position 0 without the appropriate tools or budget.
- Patient: no SEO strategy can be well executed without projecting it in the medium or long term. Google doesn’t like tricks or gimmicks, so you can’t cheat your way to the top. It is better to be patient and to progress slowly but surely. Haste and SEO don’t go well together, and an SEO specialist should keep that in mind if they want a project to succeed in the long run.
- Communicative: using technical jargon is all very well among peers, but for most humans, it is difficult to comprehend. Choosing a language that is simple and easy to grasp is crucial when addressing clients who need to understand and feel confident about what is being done. A good consultant needs to show their clients why the path they have chosen will eventually yield results.
- Creative: creativity is undervalued in SEO. Yet, it is important to come up with new strategies, different from the competition. Following a safe path has its merits but taking risks from time to time is the only way to find new approaches to climb positions more effectively. Innovation and creativity are two fundamental pillars of any winning strategy.
Eskimoz, the SEO consultancy you need
At Eskimoz, we have spent over 10 years helping all kinds of businesses to fine-tune their strategy and achieve their goals online. Thanks to our extensive team of experts in all positioning factors, we continue to increase traffic to all our clients and to assist them with their objectives.
We have established our presence in the UK and expanded our activities internationally to bring our experience and knowledge to companies that want to increase their customer base and improve their visibility on Google and other search engines. If you need a good SEO consultant in the UK, be sure to get in touch, and we will make your goals a reality.
