From Google’s helpful content updates to easy access to conversational AI tools such as Chat GPT, there are plenty of trends out there—all with the chance to affect the efficacy of your SEO strategy.
However, trends aren’t the be-all and end-all of SEO, and many core SEO best practices remain not just relevant but essential to improving your website’s ranking.
Search engine optimization consulting offers the inside information you need to determine what’s a passing trend and what’s here to stay. Not sure if your business could benefit from working with an SEO consulting team? Check out your score on the following SEO consultant checklist to see if your DIY SEO strategy is up to scratch.
What is SEO consulting?
Despite the popularity of using search engine optimization (SEO) as a part of a business’s digital marketing strategy, many businesses aren’t clear on what exactly an SEO consultant can offer them.
SEO plays an essential role in the success of your brand. An SEO consultant has one goal in mind: to improve your website’s visibility in Google and other search engines.
A trusted SEO consulting expert is the difference between your website ranking for keywords associated with your business and it being lost in trillions of web pages that Google discovers—and chooses whether or not to include.
To boost your site’s ranking, an SEO consultant may:
- Carry out an audit of your website.
- Conduct keyword research and analysis.
- Create a custom content strategy and provide content.
- Continuously optimize your site’s health.
An SEO consultancy can offer a comprehensive service that covers the entire digital marketing cycle, from building your strategy to analyzing its success.
See If You Need SEO Consultants With This Checklist!
Still unsure whether you need an SEO consultant?
Consider the questions on the checklist below—if you answer “no” to one or more questions, then it’s likely an SEO consultant would be able to improve your site’s visibility. Let’s take a look!
Do you have any SEO strategy experience?
First up: do you have experience creating and implementing an SEO strategy?
Crafting an SEO strategy requires careful consideration of multiple interacting factors, including your business and its offerings, your competitors, the industry you’re in, the age and technical health of your website, and much more.
Without SEO experience, it can be tough for businesses to create a strategy that works for them. A key benefit of hiring SEO consulting services is that the strategy will be informed by an in-depth knowledge of the industry and an awareness of shifting trends, allowing your business to get ahead of the ever-shifting search engine requirements that can prevent a site from ranking.
How old is your website? Does it have authority?
While simply having existed for longer isn’t going to automatically give your site a better ranking, site age plays into another factor that affects where your site lands on Google: site authority.
The age and history of the domain your site is hosted on can affect how well your site performs. Typically, older domains are considered to be both more authoritative and more trustworthy, and your viewers may consider your content more credible.
Additionally, older sites have often had more opportunities to accumulate backlinks—again, indicating the authority of the site—and demonstrate their relevance—often through having a wider range of content.
If you’re considering getting started with SEO on your website, it’s important to recognize that building organic traffic through search engine optimization is a long-term marketing strategy. A website optimization consultant can carry out a full audit of your site’s technical health, including its backlink profile, to help build your site authority—regardless of the age of your website.
Are you targeting the right keywords for your business?
Keyword research—the process of finding, analyzing, and selecting keywords—is a crucial stage in any SEO strategy.
The process of choosing the right keywords for your business can be a challenging one. While most businesses correctly choose keywords that are aligned with the products or services they’re offering, it can be easy to miss the bigger picture.
Ask yourself the following questions about your keywords:
- Have you considered the search intent behind your keywords?
- Have you taken the time to research your competitors’ keywords?
- Have you assessed your keywords for traffic potential, keyword difficulty, and domain authority?
- Does your keyword research contain a mixture of short-tail, medium-tail, and long-tail keywords?
- Do you have a process in place for the inclusion of secondary and tertiary keywords in your content?
These are all areas of keyword research that an SEO consultant will be well-versed to advise you on.
Are you regularly publishing blog content?
Publishing blog content on a regular schedule benefits your company in two key ways: increasing organic traffic and building brand awareness.
However, many businesses jump head-first into blog writing without taking the time to build a content strategy that is informed by their SEO goals. Writing and maintaining a blog is time-intensive, and it can be easy to resort to the goal being to get any content published!
In an ideal world, your content strategy and your SEO strategy will be carefully aligned to simultaneously enhance your website’s value to your visitors and its ranking on Google. The best way to achieve this is to select a content-oriented SEO consultancy firm that can deliver high-quality SEO-optimized content while also optimizing the rest of your site.
How many backlinks are you getting?
As we mentioned above, the presence of high-quality backlinks on your site plays a key role in demonstrating to a search engine that your site is authoritative, increasing its chances of ranking highly.
You can think of a backlink as a “vote” from another website. By including a link to your site, that website is vouching for the authority, utility, and relevance of your page. Not only does that link have the potential to generate traffic, but it also sends the signal to Google and other search engines that your site is authoritative.
To analyze the backlinks of your site, you can use backlink audit tools such as Semrush’s BackLinks Analytics or for free by using the Google Search Console (GSC). If you’re having trouble getting the backlinks you need, this is another element that a search engine consulting expert can assess as a part of their services.
Is your website optimized for technical SEO?
When was the last time you checked the technical health of your website?
Common technical SEO issues can easily stack up and have a detrimental effect on your site’s ranking on Google. Things to look for include:
- Duplicate content
- Broken links or redirects
- Missing no index tags
- Sitemap errors
- A low word count
- Missing meta tag description
- Indexing errors
- Slow loading time
Carrying out the ongoing technical optimizations needed to maintain your site’s health (and boost its ranking) can be time-intensive work requiring a comprehensive understanding of the technical underpinnings of your website. While it is absolutely possible to work towards improving your site health on your own, search engine optimization consultants can offer an up-to-date understanding of the elements at play, as well as access to tools to locate, assess, and fix technical issues with ease.
Ranq—The Best SEO Consultants Around
Here at Ranq, search engine optimization consulting is what we do.
Clients who partner with Ranq receive a comprehensive search engine optimization audit and strategy customized to the specific needs of their site, complete with content creation, technical SEO, and tactical outreach.
Offering robust keyword research and 6 pieces of unique, targeted blog content a month, Ranq does more than make SEO strategy recommendations—we’ll put them into action. To learn more about what Ranq can offer your business, or to get a free quote from an SEO optimization consultant you can trust, reach out to Ranq today!