Under some conditions, hiring an SEO expert is not just an option, but a crucial necessity you must not overlook. Here are 5 sure signs that will signal you that you must not do it alone.
Technology is fast reaching common people and nowadays a lot of businesses and digital marketing professionals can handle the recurring SEO management tasks of their own web portals. Enterprises have hired web developers, content writers, and other professionals to support the SEO program on an ongoing basis.
However, there are some situations that only seasoned SEO experts can handle. If you give a try to tackle these crucial issues on your own, you are going to face frustration and monetary loss.
Here are 5 reasons why you should hire an SEO expert.
1. Google Search is no more indexing your site or pages
Troubleshooting the issue of your website missing on the Google Search results can be handled best only by professionals.
Accomplished SEO experts very well know what is to be done without wasting much time.
The issue here could be a simple oversight on part of Google to crawl your website or it could be a more complex issue regarding your website structure and URL parameters
It is also possible that your content has been plagiarized making Google assume that it resembles another page on your website.
While the reasons for this could be many, only SEO experts can figure out the right cause and get your website to appear on Google search results once again.
2. When a redesign or site migration is on the way
When there are some major changes to the domain of the website, design, navigation protocols, URL structure, or CMS platform, the results could be risky.
Entrusting the total care of your website to a web designer in such cases is never a good idea.
Business owners must understand that any changes to websites can affect their organic search traffic.
While confronting such changes, hiring an SEO expert to attend to your website will give you a full analytical report on the different technical demands and needs.
The plan an SEO expert is likely to give under such circumstances can help mitigate risks and assist in the smooth migration of your website. They can also help keep a close watch on the traffic anomalies following such migration.
3. If there is a drop in Organic Traffic
If you find the Google search traffic decreasing, you will hardly know how to move forward.
Several reasons could lead to a drop in site traffic and many such causes can be reversed with the intervention of an SEO expert.
Fixing such issues is never a straightforward task. Given such situations, it is a good idea to hire an SEO consultant.
The causes of the drop in organic traffic can be many. Often they could be a simple reporting glitch or just some seasonality trends. At times, some algorithmic changes could be affecting the pages of the site. There could also be some technical issues due to some manual actions causing this problem.
Whatever could be the cause, you need the services of an SEO expert who can review the search traffic trends and find out the most likely reason for the loss of traffic and show a clear route map to rectify the drop.
4. Reversing a manual action
When you have reasons to suspect that a manual action could have caused the drop in traffic, the first thing you must do is to trace down what kind of manual action has taken place and which pages have been affected.
All the related issues in this situation need to be fixed on all the pages that have been affected. This must be done before recommending a reconsideration review.
The main components of a reconsideration review include listing the quality issues on the website, narrating the efforts you have taken to set them right, and documenting the results of your efforts.
If needed, you must also provide Google with a good faith assurance that such issues will not repeat, you have taken the issue seriously and have decided not to spam the internet anymore.
All these steps must be handled carefully and only an SEO expert well-versed in navigating the manual actions can help resolve such an issue.
5. SEO strategy does not give results
Sometimes when you work with an SEO agency or a novice SEO professional, you may not see the results expected of your SEO strategy. Even if your SEO strategy is working, you might at times get busy and not able to give the time needed to lead the smooth operation of the machine.
You might have wanted to try SEO as a DIY task, but do not enjoy it anymore.
The reasons could be any of these, but if you are not that happy with your present organic search strategy, it is time to hire an SEO expert.
It is necessary to follow your intuition, stay calm and keep focusing on the other aspects of your business as usual.
How to choose the right SEO professional
Long experience in the SEO industry is not a valid criterion to distinguish the right SEO professional from the rest. At times, we see even long-term professionals throw bad advice while newcomers seem to have the right knowledge of things. Therefore, going by popularity and years of experience must not be your approach.
Here is a list of six tips that will guide your choice of the right SEO expert who will be able to help you meet your business goals.
1. Ability to communicate well
The quality of communication is the number one aspect you must check. Find out what the SEO expert recommends, the plans for implementation, and the process of tracking the results.
If you are not clear about anything the professional says, do not hesitate to ask for an explanation.
Go by the understanding that it is after all your business and you must know the plans of the marketer so that the mission is steered towards giving the results you want.
Google says that tactics that are misleading or deceptive like ‘throwaway domains’ or doorway packages can lead to the removal of your website from Google’s index.
When you know that the SEO professional you want to consider has your good interest in mind, you will have a great amount of mental comfort.
When the professional is not bent on clarifying your doubts, it is a sure red signal that you are not face-to-face with the right choice.
2. If the professional’s strategy is in line with your business goals
Never hesitate to get a paid SEO audit done on your website so that the SEO strategy can be custom-developed to suit your business goals.
Before choosing to work with someone, ensure that their strategy meets those of yours for your business.
Though marketers cannot guarantee or promise results, they can certainly take steps to align their goals and strategies with what you believe is good for your business.
For instance, let us say you want to hire an SEO expert since the leads generated by your website are not good.
When you approach an SEO expert, for this reason, he might review the Google Search Console clicks and tell you, “Hey, it is possible to increase the traffic by 300% by inserting this keyword from position eight to position four” you must know this is never a good match to go with.
There is no point in increasing the traffic to those pages that are not generating good quality leads.
If the SEO professional you are approaching wishes to speak to your sales team to suggest them the right keyword strategy, you are facing someone who is actually responding to the needs of your business and can help you meet your goals.
3. SEO Knowledge
SEO is a huge blanket that covers several specialties under it. Therefore, you must always look for an SEO professional with the right technical skillset that can rightly address the need or issue you confront.
Depending on what you want to address with regard to your website including site migration, loss of traffic, winning more backlinks, or other aspects, you must check if the expert you are hiring has the right set of skills appropriate to your requirements.
Similar to what happens while building an app, the developer will have to code in that language. Therefore, it is necessary that the SEO expert you hire is knowledgeable in the kind of SEO that your website requires.
4. The cost of SEO services
Assuming that you will not expect the results for the next year, you must determine the budget you can allot to the marketing efforts.
The cost of SEO services can differ based on different aspects like the type of service expected, the provider, and the plan you want to go for.
The cost of local SEO per month could be from $300 to $1,500, while the same case of international retainers can go between $5,000 and $10,000.
The most common spectrum of hourly rates for SEO consultants falls between $75 and $1,500 per hour.
5. What is expected from the services?
When you hire an SEO professional, make sure that you are clear about your expectations.
A 2017 study on SEO traced the keyword positioning done over a year on 2 million pages. After a year, not more than 5.7% of all the pages studied ranked within the top 10 search results for at least one keyword. Therefore, we must understand that SEO is always a long-haul game.
The pages that were lucky in the above case needed from two months to six months to be able to make way to the first page.
In fact, we can’t say these pages were lucky because in all these cases, there had been some SEO professional making things work.
6. Ask For References
It is a good idea to ask for references even if the SEO reports big results on social media or if a friend has recommended it or it has great reviews. Approach this in the same way you will do when you want to hire a good employee.
When you check references, it is necessary to find out whether the SEO guidance has helped and if the outcome was sustainable.
A good SEO must be able to integrate the optimization mission into the business operations.
Most importantly, ensure that the SEO professional you want to hire is focused on long-term wins and not on some quick fixes.
Questions To Ask an SEO professional before hiring one
When you hire an SEO professional, do not ask questions like, “How do you plan to improve my website?” Such questions will not help because the professional might have a different notion of the word ‘improve’ than you do.
It is necessary to phrase your question in a way it can give a better idea to understand if their process can align with your business goals.
Ask these questions to the SEO expert before hiring:
• Can you share a story of solving an issue similar to what I am facing now?
• How can we measure the outcome of your SEO campaign?
• How often will you update me on the progress of the campaign and analytics?
• Can you list the most important techniques in SEO?
• Which areas do you plan to outsource?
• What are your charges and terms of payment?
• What to expect if we have to part ways?
Take away
If you have implemented the basic SEO processes in place, several routine SEO tasks can be managed in-house. There are but situations like site migration or a drop in organic traffic when it is advisable to hire a professional SEO.
While hiring an SEO professional, it is necessary to ask questions that will help ascertain if the expert’s SEO strategies align with your marketing objectives.