SEO Consultants are sought by website owners and IT professionals seeking to be found by internet users on the search engines, the social media and other relevant locations online. As with all consultants, expertise, advice and experience are what their clientele seek. Businesses, organizations, associations et al have traditionally used direct marketing to promote their products, services, causes and common interests. The web has provided new challenges as the individual has now assumed complete control over whether, when and how they seek information and when they make buying decisions. The individual is now the initiator and they are using a completely new medium turning traditional marketing on its head.
The main tool that online users take advantage of is, of course, the search engines; overwhelmingly Google is the search engine of choice. So, search engine marketing is the set of processes involved in meeting the online searcher at a common destination … page 1 of Google and the other search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the set of processes involved in being found on page 1 of Google specifically in the organic listings where every click is free to the online marketer.
The big problem of course is that getting to page 1 for any, even slightly competitive industry, product or service is a tough task; a task that is rarely, if ever, understood by untrained personnel. So SEO Consultants are there to bridge this gap in expertise.
However, buyers beware! There are countless companies that provide SEO Services but are not consultants. These companies are simply selling services, which may not include the necessary consultation to understand the full scope of SEO, the clients’ business and the objectives of the corporate marketing program. Further, not all SEO consultants are truly consultants. This manifests itself in companies that are NOT full service companies but offer one or more elements of SEO. This leads to the inevitable tendency to slant emphasis to those SEO elements that are offered. A full service Internet Marketing Company with no allegiance or dependence on certain elements is best positioned to provide the best and most comprehensive service level.
Look for SEO Consultants that do the following
- Ask you relevant questions about your business, products and services AND really listen attentively to your responses.
- Seeks to understand your business and marketing objectives.
- Seeks to understand your budget limitations … no one has an unlimited budget.
- Tells you what you need to know … not necessarily what you want to hear. This is critically important. Here are some examples of what you need to know:
- SEO takes significant time; often 6-12 before significantly measurable results are achieved.
- SEO never ends. If you stop you will drop in the rankings
- It is not enough to get good rankings. You have to optimize the site for conversions as well.
- SEO is expensive. You can’t achieve page 1 of Google for highly competitive keywords without employing SEO Professionals with significant expertise and track record.
- SEO requires a major commitment to a constant, continuous stream of new, unique content; articles, press releases, podcasts, videos and more.
- SEO does not equal title tags, metadata, meta keywords and sitemaps. It’s actually a small piece of the process.
- There are no shortcuts in SEO. Your success is entirely earned.
Only those SEO consultants that are confident enough and forthright enough to provide you the full picture should be worthy of your business.
August 11, 2009
