One of the biggest tasks for a company’s marketing manager is discovering the best ways to promote a company. In a perfect world, your brand would invest in various tactics to maximize its online traffic and conversions. Alas, limited resources will force your internal team to make tough choices.
Among different approaches you might consider pursuing, SEO services stand out as perhaps the best brand-building method. A search engine optimization expert will introduce various improvements to your platform, ensuring that the visitors have a great experience using your site.
Most notably, paying for SEO consulting services is also fantastic if you wish to focus on other digital channels. No matter what you use to drive traffic, all these leads will eventually land on your site. If your pages aren’t properly designed and optimized, it might affect the visitors’ perception of your business.
In this article, we talk about SEO consulting services and how hiring a good SEO consultant can boost your marketing efforts.
Why do you need SEO consulting services?
Organic traffic is the best-converting web traffic, providing 200% to 275% more conversions compared to social media traffic. Unfortunately, most companies are well aware of this, which is why they invest heavily in SEO strategies. Only 25% of users visit the second page of Google search, which is why it’s imperative to reach the first ten spots.
Keep in mind that Google’s employees are constantly working on its algorithms. Just in 2021, the company made more than 5,000 improvements and 800,000 experiments. The sheer number of changes to search engine algorithms puts pressure on your in-house team, forcing them to spend a good part of their day staying in the loop.
While other digital marketing strategies can also provide good results for your brand, they can’t even scratch the SEO surface. Search engine optimization is fantastic for business development, building brands that otherwise struggle to implement social media, email marketing, and referral marketing.
But we do understand if this limited information isn’t enough to commit. So, here are a few other reasons for hiring an SEO consultant:
- Google trumps other traffic sources
Implementing an SEO strategy is much more lucrative than relying on other tactics. Here’s what your marketing manager and marketing team can expect from this approach compared to some other popular digital marketing tactics:
SEO vs. SMM
As mentioned, social media converts at a much lower clip than traffic from search engine results pages. This is because people don’t visit Facebook and Twitter to search for metallic springs or facility management firms; they go there to be entertained and chat with friends. Instead, when looking for these services, they browse relevant, local, and global web pages.
SEO vs. PPC
Something similar can be said for search marketing, that is, paid search. According to 70% of marketing teams, SEO services easily trump PPC as they’re much better for long-term brand building. While paid ads are fantastic for generating instant leads, they can be quite expensive. Depending on the industry, you might pay $2 or $3 for a click, a price that goes up to several hundred dollars.
Another issue with paid traffic is that it doesn’t help your website’s visibility or improve your site’s technical aspects. In other words, even if people land on your website content, they might be turned off by poorly written pieces or poor site structure.
SEO vs. email marketing
Emailing is usually perceived as an ancillary marketing activity used during different campaigns. For example, SEO consultants often use email marketing during link building.
This approach is fantastic for B2B campaigns, and marketing teams use it to reach potential customers they don’t have contact with. Unfortunately, the main issue with emailing is that you’re still limited by the quality of your site and technical SEO. People will check your platform and online reviews; if you’re not active online, they might perceive this as a bad sign.
SEO vs. influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has increased in popularity in the last several years, and some companies generate enormous interest with these campaigns. Unfortunately, similar to other methods, it can be a major money sink if you don’t do proper targeting.
For influencer marketing to be effective, you need to partner up with a person that specializes in your industry. But if you’re into plumber, electrician, or mover, it will be hard to find influencers who would bring enough relevant traffic. For all these reasons and much more, you should hire a reputable SEO consulting company like MiroMind.
- Your website is vital for marketing
Your company website is, first and foremost, your calling card. Potential customers check this page before doing business with your brand, so you must leave a good impression. Furthermore, the website is a destination for all your marketing campaigns, from social media and email outreach to paid campaigns.
In other words, no matter how you wish to promote your brand, you’ll always need an actionable SEO strategy and the right SEO consultant in your corner. For example, when people click on one of your paid ads, they land on a relevant page on your site. If you’re suffering from slow site speed or the platform isn’t optimized, you’ll fail to turn these visitors into clients.
An SEO specialist can create a basis upon which you can build all marketing efforts. Aside from improving performance, these professionals can periodically check for Google penalties, site-wide errors, and anything else that might hinder your performance. Most notably, they can create actionable pages using the best SEO practices, thus ensuring high conversion rates.
- SEO is a brand-building powerhouse
You can significantly improve your brand awareness by hiring an SEO agency and reaching the top of search engines. Whether you like it or not, people will start citing you as a reputable source, providing links and shares for your global and local optimization. The boost in authority goes beyond marketing; your business will find it easier to close deals with clients that were previously out of your reach.
Here are a few branding perks you might experience:
- Links gained from other sources will serve as a continuous source of traffic
- Positive reviews will increase your reputation and authority while making it easier to make sales
- Numerous mentions will make it easier for leads to corroborate the authenticity of your business
- Brands with stronger online presence find it easier to partner with other companies
More importantly, this promotional activity creates a cascading effect, where you gain more and more benefits over time. Every link and mention can go a long way in building your online brand providing direct traffic, and boosting your pages in search engines. Of course, the effects are even more noticeable if you partner with a reputable SEO company for several years.
- Optimization provides perpetual benefits
When entrepreneurs give you a link or a shoutout, they rarely go back to remove it unless you’ve angered them somehow. Simply put, removing all these elements takes too much time, which is why SEO consultants rarely bother backtracking.
This is both a blessing and a curse for your business. The reason why this is great is because you can rest assured that everything you’ve done during a campaign will continue providing benefits. Unfortunately, this also means that your competitors will experience similar perks, making it harder to take them down in search rankings.
- Optimization teaches you about the industry
Unlike other marketing tactics, SEO is heavily competitor oriented. Keyword research and user intent analysis are at the center of this promotional strategy, providing better insights into the target market. You can rest assured that the information is correct because SEO professionals use Google Analytics and Google Seach Console for this task, both of which are reliable platforms.
During SEO campaigns, you’ll learn a lot about the following things:
- Things people look for in search results
- The popularity of “money” phrases
- How much money companies are willing to spend for a click
- The most common origins of web traffic
- Sex, age, and interests of your target audience
The data we get during an SEO campaign is invaluable for our brand as it might teach us about things we’ve never noticed. For example, it can show us we’ve been catering to the wrong audience or that most of our clients come from a different city/state.
Even if you don’t need an external marketing team, you should still hire a good SEO consultant to perform this analysis. Ideally, you should find someone with extensive SEO knowledge and understanding of your industry. The expert can break down this data and extract valuable information for your business.
Should I hire an SEO consultant for short-term tasks?
As mentioned, you can always benefit from having an expert SEO consultant. Even if you don’t want to commit to search engine optimization, you should still hire an optimization expert to perform a few checks:
SEO audit
Unless there were some major changes on your site or with Google’s algorithm, you shouldn’t have to bother with audits all the time. These are periodic checkups that determine the health of your business website, putting emphasis on things such as site speed, architecture, indexing, broken links and page errors, and mobile friendliness.
Still, hiring an SEO consultant from time to time can prove to be beneficial in this particular case. Companies often neglect the best optimization practices, even if they previously employed them, causing them to make various site-wide errors affecting conversion rates during their marketing campaigns.
Keyword research
For the most part, keyword research is one of those SEO consulting services you can perform several times during the company’s existence. Target keywords don’t change much during a company’s existence unless there are major technological or methodological shifts within the client’s industry.
Executing research helps a brand remain competitive and meet business objectives. If you know what people are looking for in the Google search engine, you can customize SMM and PPC campaigns based on these phrases.
Similar to keyword research, user intent analysis is a critical part of the process. As mentioned, an SEO consultant will check the shift in target audience and behavior, which could help modify the client’s marketing efforts.
Local SEO
Unlike global optimization, which requires lots of work, SEO consultants can easily set up your local features. An SEO agency will add your brand to Google My Business and other directories, after which they’ll create articles for relevant local phrases. After that, it’s your task to get good reviews from customers and propel yourself higher in search.
Setting up an account is straightforward and can be done in a few days. Creating content for local keywords is a bit longer and might take a few weeks or even months. However, this will grant you access to massive yet relevant traffic in your home city. The best thing about local optimization is that it’s commercially oriented, often resulting in sales.
Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t need a long-term local SEO service. Like all other marketing processes, there’s fierce competition for top spots in local search results. While setting up the account and creating a few locally-focused articles is a great way to start things off, you’ll need continuous efforts to stay afloat.
Last considerations
SEO consultants can provide numerous benefits for your brand. These service providers introduce numerous improvements to your site, helping you achieve better results with all marketing campaigns. Besides boosting technical performance, SEO consultants also create content and build links in their attempt to increase organic traffic gain from relevant keywords.
Search engine optimization can work for all brands, but there are situations where it truly shines. For example, SEO consulting services are vital for smaller local brands, allowing them to reach local audiences. They can also work fantastic in cases when social media and paid advertising don’t work that well.