If organic growth is your main goal as an entrepreneur, at some point, you’ll need to consider an SEO strategy for better rankings. Planning, executing, and pivoting a well-developed SEO strategy is very time-consuming, and it’s not easy to do without proper knowledge. Since billions of websites worldwide want to appear at the top of search engine results, the demand for SEO experts is rising. Hiring an SEO expert means that the expert will manage the SEO strategy for the company. But the problem is that most business owners don’t know enough about SEO, SEO needs, and how to write a good SEO job description.
Ask relevant questions when hiring an SEO expert. “I’ve seen many job descriptions that don’t seem to know what they’re looking for,” actually. Schwartz said. Some have responsibilities that are ten years old, while others have high standards. You may want someone who understands content, project management, and analytics, but can you get all of those skills in one person? Unlikely.”
In this accordance, we’re covering the 7 steps to hiring an SEO expert. It comes out of smart choices, strategies, and the capacity to scale. In this article, we will find out who experts are, what they exactly do, and how to choose the right one. But then the question arises: How do you find the right SEO consultant? Let’s get straight to finding out.
7 Steps to Hire an SEO Expert
1. First, learn some SEO basics:
Many companies think they can hire someone to run their marketing campaigns and their channel, and they will see success in time. But we know from experience that the companies that achieve the best success levels with a consultant or an agency understand the whole channel process themselves first and are seeing some good results. Then after understanding, they take it to the next level. Hiring an SEO expert starts with your own understanding.
Just like owning a business, if something goes wrong and you don’t know about the solution because you don’t have any knowledge about it, that’s completely on you. If you think you have to hire an SEO expert, first learn some SEO basics on your own to choose the best one in the industry.
As a company owner, you want to learn the basics of SEO, read the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO, learn about links and why they matter a lot in SEO, and learn the importance of content. To better understand your website ranking and your targeted customers, look at Google Analytics. Then use SEMrush to analyze the keyword rankings.
After you understand the basics of SEO on your own, discuss your project scope with some people. Every business needs are different, so don’t be fooled when someone says SEO is a “one size fits all” sort of endeavor.
2. Find an Experienced Person According to Your Site’s Type:
As I said above, SEO is not a one-size-fits-all undertaking. Your business type and niche will determine how effective it will be, how long it will take to impact your business and lead toward success, and how competitive the search result page surface is. To understand your space and what techniques it will take to rank competitively. I wouldn’t recommend that you hire someone who has done SEO for your competitor before because you can work for a long time with someone who has fresh ideas.
If you hire a person who has already worked with your competitor, you’ll be copying your competitor while they are heading towards the new SEO expert with more moral ideas. You should look for someone with vast experience doing SEO for local businesses and globally. For every domain of business, the strategies are different, the tactics are different, and even the results are different. You need someone who has worked with your size of website.
3. Choose whether you want to hire an agency or consultant:
For an SEO expert, you have to look at some aspects that make you want to hire an individual consultant, i.e., a freelancer or an agency with a specialist team to execute the different tasks. I know you know the difference between an agency and a consultant, but for your better understanding:
A solo consultant or a freelancer is someone who works individually on their own, often primarily on strategy and some recommendations, and helps companies increase their organic traffic. But an individual consultant will not be able to implement all the recommended strategies or fix all the issues they find in the audit.
An agency comprises many types of employees, i.e., strategists, account managers, writers, SEO experts, and more. Most often, agencies have channel specialists (for example, SEO or pay-per-click) and teams to execute the strategies (for example, developers and designers, as well as some SEO workers).
Whether you want a consultant or an agency depends on the capabilities, you have at your business and also on the budget. “Knowing the difference between an agency and a consultant and hiring the right one for your business is often the make-it-or-break-it part of the whole hiring process.” If your company has developers and designers, you can go for the consultant, as your developers can handle the development.
When hiring for a specific channel like SEO, an individual SEO expert can be a fantastic choice for bigger businesses. They have experience working across teams, communicating with developers, and making business cases to help get high organic traffic.
4. Ask the interview questions:
Now, you know the basics, and you’ve educated yourself enough in SEO to interview a candidate. When you do this, you need to ask the right questions that prove the right choice for your business. “The biggest mistake I notice businesses making when hiring a consultant or agency is overlooking the provider’s fit with your style of working.” I know the agency or the consultant can be the best choice for SEO in the world, but if their preferred way of working is not compatible with your business, then after some time, you will surely face problems. At least you both have to be on the same page while working for the betterment of the project.
5. Identify who you will be working with:
Every agency’s working strategy and a different structure than others. In my professional life experience, I’ve never seen agencies work entirely in the same way. This is because agencies or businesses can be successful in different ways, and the position varies with the experience and strength of the founder. While hiring someone, you should know yourself and your working style. Suppose you work quickly and make decisions quickly. In that case, you will likely be frustrated if, at any point, you are stuck with an account manager in communication who likely does not know about marketing, which leads to confusing questions and answers between you and the person with subject matter expertise who is doing the work.
To avoid these consequences, the simplest way to identify who you will be working with directly is to ask about the initial courting process with the agency. Ask them in the first phase how they communicate. How quickly do they meet the deadlines? And who can you contact as the primary person for any query?
6. Who will do the work?
I’ve seen many businesses that do not want to work with an agency, especially highly developed agencies. Because they think the agency will likely be given a junior person to work instead of the team’s senior and more skilled person. Unfortunately, it’s true. Businesses decide to work with an agency because they heard the founder or a senior executive speak at a conference or meeting and saw their content, for example, publications and articles. However, the unfortunate reality is that 9 out of 10 times, the person who impressed you during the work experience will not even touch the project.
So during the courting process, you should have to ask and meet the person who will actually do the project. Ask about their experience; see their past projects’ performances, and see their client’s success and failure. If you don’t feel comfortable with them, decide whether you want to work with them or not. Bring this problem up and discuss it with the senior spokesperson so they can suggest the other one.
This is the reason why most businesses prefer to work with solo consultants. As they have no communication barrier, they can easily ask him questions and analyze his performance. Another main thing is that if you’re not a marketer yourself, you probably don’t know about the time period to see the results from your agency or an SEO expert. Ask about their methodology, how long it will take to get things set up within their system, the work that has to go live before running the campaigns, and how long the whole project will take.
The best agencies and consultants always promise and try to fulfill the requirements. They want you to have realistic expectations about what you can see, what to expect, and when you see things either working well according to the strategies or needing to be rethought.
7. Go for client referrals.
Now at this point, you are ready to sign the deal. You’ve learned some basics about SEO. Now, You’ve thought about and decided whether you have to go with an agency or a solo consultant. You’ve asked the relevant interview questions to find the best fit. You learn whom you’ll contact with questions and who you’ll be working with, and your expectations are set.
Now at this point, I always recommend trying to contact some of their past clients before making a final decision and going through their perspectives. If they don’t have any former clients, you can talk with, that’s a red flag. Reach out to their previous clients via email first, and then try to get them on the phone for 5 to 10 minutes to talk about their experience with that agency.
Final Thoughts:
I know that hiring an SEO expert is not easy, and I’ve seen many try and fail to hire the perfect one. But I’ve also seen success stories when the proper research is done and the relationship is smooth on both sides. We’re here to help you find the best SEO services from professionals. Contact us now and hire the professionals that will lead your business.
