When to Hire an SEO Consultant or Manager for Your Business
When is the best time to hire a search engine optimization (SEO) consultant or manager? The answer is anytime.
However, some situations may demand their services more urgently. Here are a few examples of when you should consider working with a web optimization expert.
4 Signs It’s Time to Hire an SEO Team
These are certain signs that it’s time to call in reinforcements. Below are some signs that tell you it’s time to collaborate with an SEO agency or marketer.
1. You Have No Idea About SEO
SEO is not for the fainthearted. It is one of the most complex strategies in the world for many reasons:
- Its guidelines change over time. Today’s SEO is very different from five or ten years ago. Search engine algorithms frequently change, as do online consumer patterns and behaviors. User experience (UX) is important in web design and optimization as more people utilize mobile devices.
- Many factors impact SEO. According to Digital Authority Partners (DAP), a reliable optimization consultant should know about the top optimization trends. These include understanding the core web vitals, writing long-form content, and generating quality backlinks.
- External factors can also influence optimization. Unanticipated events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can force businesses to change their marketing strategies almost overnight. Unless you have an in-house expert who closely monitors these changes and is always on top of the latest trends, it might be difficult to keep up.
- SEO is data-driven. A successful SEO campaign requires constant analysis and split testing. The process of measuring results, making changes, and re-measuring can be time-consuming and requires specific technical skills.
Optimization tools can only do so much, especially if your SEO knowledge only scratches the surface. You need an experienced consultant to make sense of the data and offer actionable recommendations.
2. You Like to Create a Cohesive Digital Marketing Plan
At first glance, an online marketing campaign feels disjointed. For example, you have separate techniques for how to build social media followers. Rules also seem separate for publishing paid ads, writing emails, and optimizing web pages.
The reality is that all these digital marketing channels influence each other, and SEO is the tie that binds everything together. Here’s how:
- A well-designed SEO strategy considers the big picture and how every element affects your ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Optimization also looks into creating customer personas. This step is essential to formulate the right message and call to action (CTA) for each marketing channel.
- SEO can help you repurpose content for other digital marketing platforms, such as using blog posts as social media updates or infographics for email marketing.
- Search engine marketing (SEM) supports your SEO efforts by supplying paid traffic to your website while you’re still building organic reach.
- Good SEO can make your paid ads more effective by increasing your quality score, which reduces your cost-per-click.
- Your social media posts will have a higher chance of getting seen if you optimize them for the right keywords.
An SEO specialist on your team unifies all your digital marketing initiatives and prevents them from working against each other.
3. You Want to Maximize Your Digital Marketing Budget
A recent survey revealed a growing problem among companies that want to capitalize on online marketing today.
Nearly 60% of business leaders said they wanted to spend more on online advertising this year. They might even increase it by over 15% in 2023.
However, at least 30% of marketers claimed they have yet to see significant returns on their spending. Unless they do so, their ideal budgets might shrink.
What is causing the gap? Plenty, from a steep learning curve doing analytics to disorganized integrated marketing strategies and difficulty knowing the present customer journey.
But the solution can be simple: call an SEO agency to help maximize financial resources.
Here’s how an optimization consultant can save you money:
- They can look into your existing website and digital marketing campaigns to find areas for improvement.
- An expert can also help set up the right tools and processes to make your team more efficient.
- You might be paying for premium services that you don’t even need because an optimization specialist can find alternatives that are just as good.
- Experienced SEO consultants can align their strategies to your business goals so you’re not spending money on random marketing initiatives.
- SEO teams can actually work on your budget, finding ways to stretch it as much as possible without sacrificing quality.
4. You Are Not Seeing the Results You Desire
Nothing is more frustrating and disappointing than a lackluster online marketing performance. You miss the chance to grow your leads, conversions, and revenues. It feels like you’re wasting precious resources like time and money.
Many factors can explain why your campaigns are not working as expected:
- Your customer retention process is complicated. Your business deals with so many challenges in customer relationship management, such as fierce competition, rapidly changing technology, and choosy customers. It can be difficult to keep track of what your target market wants and how you can improve customer loyalty.
- Your website has a high shopping cart abandonment rate. If this happens, it points to a problem with the customer experience you offer on your site. One major contributing factor is a complicated checkout process that confuses potential buyers.
- The metrics you’re using to measure success are not relevant. To assess whether your digital marketing efforts are paying off, you should establish the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking the wrong data can give you a false sense of progress.
If you’re not happy with the results you’re getting from your digital marketing, it might be time to hire an SEO agency. They can help you in two ways: get a different perspective from someone outside looking in and put together an actionable plan to turn things around.
Summing Up
When to hire an SEO consultant or manager depends on you. Be honest about whether you can do it all on your own and if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to learn.
Doing it yourself and outsourcing the job have advantages and disadvantages. The key is to understand what your business goals are, what resources you have available, and how much time and energy you’re willing to invest.
Working with an SEO agency, though, offers more benefits than problems. It speeds up results, saves you money, and makes your digital marketing strategies efficient.
