Before embarking on your SEO collaboration with an SEO Consultant, it’s good to have a basis upon which you would hire them or look elsewhere.
Reviewing their services is key to knowing if they will be a good fit for you moving forward. Remember, organic SEO is by no means an overnight marketing fad. Proper organic SEO takes even the most experienced SEO agency time to get it flowing as you want it.
Every digital marketing company will cover aspects others won’t or will be more skilled in certain areas or industries. Ideally, you want to look for the complete package.
Here we will look at some key areas that you should be checking off on a checklist as we go along.
SEO Consultant Services
SEO Audits
An SEO company that is worth its salt should feature an SEO audit.
An SEO consultant in Canberra would take an in-depth look at previous and current strategies you have in place.
If you are new to this and don’t have or haven’t had a previous SEO campaign, the evaluation will be based on how Google perceives you currently and what can be improved.
There are many online tools available such as Ahrefs and Google Analytics. Still, with the online competition has never been so high, you should look to be dealing with an SEO consultant who will be using paid tools such as SemRush, among others.
If there is no audit available, this should ring major alarm bells as this means you are dealing with a small company on a budget, which is not a good idea.
What you are looking for in 2022 is a company that tailors a customized audit with detailed background on your industry and niche.
Competitor Analysis
Regardless of how niche you believe you are within your industry, full competitor analysis needs to be conducted for online and offline relevance.
Your SEO agency finds many angles in which a strategy can be built around to supersede them whilst also seeing what kind of SEO and other marketing tricks they have used to get them where they are. However, let’s not forget it will also show up their weaknesses and many other areas they are not focusing on when they should be.
Your SEO agency should conduct a competitor review every quarter as a rule of thumb.
Custom Strategy
Ensuring your SEO consultant provides a core strategy is compulsory. Having a personalized approach to your SEO is paramount as no campaigns are the same; this is how you maximize your return on investment (ROI). A custom strategy is designed to apply the best of what you have, enhance it, and focus on lead generation and conversions.
If you see SEO specialists or agencies offering ‘cheap SEO packages‘, spend your money on new running shoes, and run as far away as possible.
These kinds of services went out of the window a long time ago. Either you won’t get dedicated work, or they will be subcontracting it out to another country at cheap labor prices, where the work quality will suffer.
It would be best to always look for a customized strategy from your consultant.
Off-page Optimisation
When deciding on your SEO consultant, packages should always include off-page optimization.
Off-page factors influence Google’s rankings that are not visible to the naked eye.
Backlinks are a prime example of this. Your backlink profile refers to both the quantity and quality of other websites that are linked to you.
Someone who runs a food blog would link to your business if you provided a stunning wedding cake for their friend’s wedding.
As standard, an SEO consultant should provide off-page SEO services as follows:
⦁ Promote the website content to webmasters and bloggers
⦁ Content curation for your website’s blog
⦁ Report on social media and influencers’ mentions and references
⦁ Optimize Google Business Profile
If you are unsure if this is included in the package, ask! With any proposal after the primary fact-find interview process, you should go through, they will issue you with a detailed proposal as all professional SEO agencies do!
This proposal is an overview of everything they conduct for your monthly SEO spend, which gives you the blueprint of which one to choose.
On-page Optimisation
We are all familiar with on-page SEO and deal with it every time we all search online.
With Google’s major updates in 2021, many of the top ten ranking factors now have to do with on-page SEO.
So here is an essential aspect when choosing a digital marketing partner for the future.
Here are some pointers on what an SEO consultant should deliver:
⦁ Your title tag, the header tag, and meta descriptions updated
⦁ Auditing of your website architecture, internal links, and redirects
⦁ Create or fix your existing sitemap
⦁ Optimize all images and videos to align with Google’s best practices
⦁ New keyword research and optimization
⦁ Content curation to enhance the latest keyword research
⦁ Analyze the design and improve each page’s load-up speed
If you are proposing SEO without on-page fixes in that proposition, you are not dealing with professionals and move to the next company on the list. It plays a vital role in SEO rankings in 2022 and beyond.
Reporting
Transparency and trust go a long way when making a medium to long-term investment, which is what SEO is. So, a factor many business owners forget to make a point of is reporting.
If you are dealing with a company that does not give you:
⦁ Access to live to report
⦁ Access to your keyword rankings
⦁ Minimum of a bi-weekly report
⦁ Detailed report of every aspect of the campaign
⦁ Breakdown of where your budget is being spent
The question should be, why not?
All the above are easy to do, and there’s nothing to hide. Even if two of your keywords have gone down in the rankings, you will know, and the team will let you know why and what they are doing to fix it.
In the industry, monthly reporting was standard many tears ago, but times have changed. You certainly want an in-depth report and not two pages at the end of the month.
Inclusive of this, you should have a designated campaign manager who is on hand throughout the day and manages your campaign. Having that person allows your team to do their analysis of the report and ask questions, therefore ensuring that everyone is always on the same page.
When you have regular meetings with your account manager, your team can ask questions, review your report one-on-one, and more. In short, routine appointments help you and your team stay on the same page as your SEO agency.
SUMMARY
Competition is rife not just on the internet but also with SEO companies and specialists to get a piece of the pie. Google’s hits per day are up over three billion compared to 2019. That statistic alone should let you know that the SEO services market is becoming saturated and not necessarily with quality. So heed some of the advice above and have a checklist in your mind when having consultations. Good luck!