Producing unique, high-quality, and valuable content is essential for every business that wants to stand out and succeed in today’s competitive business world. However, without optimizing your website and content for search engines, all your hard work of creating content to market your business will be in vain because potential customers won’t be able to know about your business.
This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. Hiring a professional SEO specialist can help boost your website’s SEO rankings significantly. When you rank high on search engines, it demonstrates your expertise and authority in your industry and makes it easier for your target market to find you. This, in turn, helps to attract more visitors to your website, boosts your brand awareness, and increases your Return On Investment (ROI), making your business grow even stronger.
Read on to discover what qualities to look for when hiring a SEO expert. But first, let’s talk about the importance of SEO in detail:
4 Reasons Why You Need To Hire A Professional SEO Expert Today
1. Increases Your Website Traffic
As we’ve already mentioned above, you stand to lose lots of potential customers, and eventually your business, if you don’t rank high for a keyword or a range of keywords in your niche. Keywords are simply the phrases and terms used by people when they search for something on the internet.
A well-rounded SEO strategy can help your business rank at the top of Search Engine Results Page (SERP), making it easier for more people to find your business. When this happens, you’re likely to see an increase in your website traffic, which tells Google how relevant you are in your industry. A higher SEO ranking also tells your current and potential consumers that you’re knowledgeable and credible in your industry.
It’s very important that the content you provide to your website visitors matches their original search intent. Simply put, your visitors should be able to find satisfactory answers to the questions they have in mind every time they visit your website.
If not, they’re likely to leave as soon as they realize that they can’t find what they’re looking for. Hiring a professional SEO expert ensures that your web content is optimized to match the original search intent of your visitors.
Other than the keywords you use and the relevance of your content, it’s also important to pay attention to your clickthrough rate, bounce rate, and dwell time, since Google bots also look at them when crawling and indexing your website.
Every time a visitor leaves your website without clicking around or reading your content, it increases your bounce rate. When your bounce rate is high, it affects your SEO rankings negatively. A SEO expert can help optimize your website to improve your dwell time and clickthrough rate so you can rank above your competitors.
2. Improves Your Brand Awareness, Credibility, And Recognition
A high SEO ranking also means potential customers will see your website at the top of SERP for your keywords every time they’re looking for products and services you offer. When they see your brand over and over again, they’ll begin to associate your business with the products and services they need. This helps to improve both your brand awareness and brand recognition.
When you become recognizable in your industry, consumers are likely to search for your business the next time they need products or services you’re offering. However, for this to happen, you have to provide content that matches their needs always. The more recognizable and trustworthy your brand is, the more loyal customers you gain and retain.
3. Improves Your User Experience
Considering that there are more than 1.5 billion websites online, making your website stand out is the only way to beat your competitors. The best SEO experts know the most recent UX (User Experience) design trends to use on your site to enhance user experience.
As you may already know, your visitors won’t stay on your website if it’s difficult to navigate. And when they leave without interacting with your content, it increases your bounce rate and lowers your SEO ranking.
On the other hand, when your website is optimized for the UX, it makes it easier to navigate and increases your load time. This user-friendliness enables consumers to find whatever they’re looking for faster.
UX design also ensures that your site is optimized for mobile device users so you don’t miss out on potential customers that access your site from their mobile devices. More customers mean more sales and a higher ROI for your business.
4. Increases Your User Engagement
Lastly, hiring a SEO expert can also increase your user engagement tremendously. When your website is optimized for the UX, users will stay longer and click around more. This not only helps to improve your dwell time but also your clickthrough rate. More potential customers will be able to convert on the page, thereby boosting your sales.
Now that you know how important SEO is for your business, let’s talk about the qualities a SEO expert should have.
12 Important Qualities To Look For When Hiring A SEO Expert
1. Several Years Of Experience
This is one of the most important qualities to have in mind when searching for a SEO expert. You should go for someone with several years of experience in providing professional SEO services.
Find out which companies they’ve worked with previously and what industries the companies belong to. Someone who has offered SEO services to companies in your industry can use that prior experience to benefit your business.
2. Proper Training And Certification
Apart from having years of experience in the relevant industry, a good SEO specialist should also have proper training and/or certification. So, be sure to ask for their professional qualifications. This is very important because SEO trends are always changing, and only someone who’s knowledgeable and informed about the latest SEO tactics and trends can adapt to Google’s algorithm changes.
3. Track Record Of Success
How do you know that a person is who he or she claims to be during an interview? By simply looking at their track record. The best SEO specialist will willingly prove their track record of success by giving you the relevant data showing how they’ve helped different clients improve their website traffic, clicks, and conversions. If you have applicants who claim to be SEO experts but can’t give you this information, continue looking until you find someone who can.
4. Good Reputation
Also, make sure you choose someone with a strong reputation in providing SEO services. The best way to find out if the reputation of someone you’re about to hire is good or bad is by asking to speak with their former clients. If they fail or are hesitant to give you the contacts of their former clients, that’s a red flag that you shouldn’t ignore.
Move on until you can find someone with a verifiable reputation. Previous customers also tend to leave reviews on the website or social media pages of the SEO specialist. Be sure to read them all before making a decision.
5. Understands Different SEO Tiers
When searching for the best SEO expert for your business, take time to find out how they plan to improve your SEO rankings. Speak with different specialists to understand their SEO approach so you know what you’re paying for.
It pays to hire someone who has knowledge in all the four tiers of SEO if you want your website to be optimized completely. These SEO tiers include local SEO, Technical SEO, Off-page SEO, and On-page SEO.
6. Ability To Create Original, High-Quality Content
Google gives priority to businesses and brands that create well-researched, unique, relevant, and high-quality content. Because of this, consider hiring a SEO specialist who can help you in this department if you want to improve your rankings. If you don’t, you’ll lose many potential customers to your competitors for sure.
7. Good Communication Skills
The best SEO expert should also have excellent communication skills. Since this is someone you’ll be working with closely, they should be able to express themselves clearly so you’re not left in the dark whenever they explain something to you.
Be sure to find out the mode of communication they’ll be using to provide you with updates on your SEO campaigns. Will you have to call them every time, or do they prefer to send you emails instead?
8. Transparency
A good SEO expert should also be very transparent and straightforward regarding their abilities and services. If not, it may not be easy trusting them with your SEO campaigns or using your marketing budget prudently.
9. Strategic-Minded
Only an SEO expert who has a deep understanding of your business can create the best strategy that will improve your SEO rankings. So, it pays to talk to the person you want to hire to know about their SEO strategy. Are they willing to research and learn more about your products, services, and target market beforehand? If not, how will they know about your business?
10. Willingness To Optimize Your Website Continuously
Before you sign any contract, you also need to find out if your preferred SEO specialist is in for the long term, or if they plan to leave you on your own once they’re done optimizing your website.
The best experts will optimize your website for search engines continuously. They’ll take their time to review your data to know the strategies that are working and the ones that aren’t. This can take up to several months to complete. From their review, they’ll know which areas of your website and content they need to improve.
11. Responsible And Accountable
The specialist you choose to work with should also be very responsible and accountable. With a responsible SEO expert by your side, you can rest easy knowing that they’ll provide all the services indicated in the contract and enable your business to achieve its SEO goals.
12. Affordable
Finally, before signing a contract with your preferred professional, ensure that their charges are within your budget. Find out which services, tools, and expertise you’ll have access to when you pay their initial cost. Generally, the long-term ROI you receive when you hire a top SEO specialist is way more than the initial amount they’ll ask from you, so you shouldn’t worry.
Final Thoughts
These are some of the qualities that every good SEO expert should have in order to help your business rank higher on search engines and attract more potential customers. Be sure to bear them in mind the next time you’re hiring.
Defined Digital only takes on a select few SEO Consulting clients at a time. We are currently full, but will be opening up a few slots by the end of the year. If you would like to be notified of openings, reach out and let us know, we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop.
