What Are Some Good Objectives When Hiring SEO Consultants?

How to Figure Out Which Kinds of SEO Goals Make Sense

Written by Colette Nichol, Solo Filmmaker and Story Strategist

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

You’re thinking about hiring an SEO consultant or working with an agency.

Now you need to know what some good objectives are when hiring SEO consultants. Hiring an SEO consultant can be one of the best investments you make in your business. 

But you’ve got to have a clear goal if you want to see results. Setting objectives that are reasonable and logical is important when getting started with SEO and working with a consultant or strategist.

I’m going to cover eight objectives to consider when hiring an SEO consultant.

However, the two most important objectives are as follows: get clear on which goals will move the needle and get a strategy that will help you achieve those goals.

8 SEO Objectives to Consider When Getting Started with an SEO Consultant

1. Improving Relevant Organic Website Traffic

The primary non-revenue objective should be increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website. 

This involves targeting relevant keywords to attract the right customer to your website. But you don’t want any old traffic.

You want traffic from every part of the customer journey.

While it would be nice if we could just go after the highest ROI keywords and do nothing else. That’s typically not possible. You often can’t gain the top keywords if you don’t also create topical authority by building out posts and pages that cover your area thoroughly. 

In other words if you are a Spa, it may be difficult to rank for Spa Vancouver if you don’t have any blog posts about skincare. If the spa niche happens to be very low competition, it’s possible that you could see results from just a few updates to the Google Business Profile and your services pages. 

But if that doesn’t move the needle, your website will need more topical authority to move up. 

Creating supporting posts that help build topical authority in your niche is a big part of most SEO strategies. In addition, building out pillar pages that act as cornerstone content and build authority, are often a big part of many SEO Strategies. 

2. Increasing Revenue Starting with a Particular Product or Vertical

An SEO consultant can’t do the sales calls or turn traffic into sales FOR you.

But if we target the right words and create content that engages the user, then you can turn those visitors into leads. You can then turn those leads into customers and see an increase in revenue.

At the end of the day, as business owners, we need to grow revenue or cut costs if we want to increase our profits.

SEO should be focused on driving revenue. However, the business owner must be engaged in the task of turning traffic into leads and customers or work with someone who will help with this key goal.

3. Achieving Higher Search Engine Rankings

The basic goal of any SEO campaign is to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) for certain relevant queries.

If you’re on page 2 for a search term, you’re not going to get any traffic for it. However, if you’re in position one, you’ll get about 30% of the organic traffic.

The higher up you are on page one and the more search volume there is for a keyword the more traffic you get.

However, it’s also common for website pages to rank for hundreds of keywords, which all drive traffic to the content. 

4. Optimizing Website User Experience

SEO isn’t just about keywords; it’s also about ensuring your website offers a great user experience, which is a factor in search rankings. However, not all SEO consultants or agencies will do website design and optimization for you. 

Find out what kind of SEO services, your consultant will do for you. 

5. Developing Quality Content

A good SEO strategy includes creating high-quality, relevant content that engages and retains visitors.

This is actually the backbone of SEO. If your SEO agency or consultant isn’t helping you create content, I really don’t know what they think they’re going to achieve. 

For most small websites, the problem is either a lack of content or a lack of relevant content. 

One of my clients has nearly 400 blog posts. But most of them are not highly relevant to what she’s selling from a search perspective. They’re very very top of funnel i.e. at the beginning of the buyer’s journey. But she is a coach. So she needs people who are in the thick of it, trying to solve the problem, and who are searching for the solution. She needs top of funnel AND bottom of funnel pages and posts.

With this client, we’ve been focusing on creating content that is extremely focused on her coaching niche.

Doing this has increased the traffic she’s getting to her sales pages by 500%.

Without content, a small business cannot grow their traffic UNLESS they’re in a niche that gets tons of traffic from their Google Business Profiles. 

6. Building Backlinks and Building Authority

Acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable sites can boost your site’s authority and rankings.

If this is something that you want to focus on then find out if your SEO consultant does that. My team is content focused. We get back links organically by creating great content. And we’ve been able to grow traffic dramatically doing this.

We also prefer to work with highly motivated clients who are open to creating a premium video series that helps to build authority in their niche. This can be a major game changer in terms of traffic and conversions. Rather than focusing on backlink building we focus on getting backlinks organically and increasing authority through YouTube and by covering the niche with as comprehensively as the client budget allows.

However, if you’re in an EXTREMELY competitive niche, you will likely need a backlink campaign.

I can work with additional contractors to assist in this or point you towards the right people if you wish to project manage this yourself. There are plenty of companies that are focused on backlink building and nothing else. I think you get better backlinks and better bang for your buck if you work with a content agency and a backlink builder separately.

7. Local SEO Optimization

If you’re a local business, local SEO is crucial in attracting customers in your area.

There are a few key things you can do to optimize for local visitors. The main one right now is to optimize your Google Business Profile and optimize your service pages for local visitors.

8. Mobile Optimization

With the increase in mobile searches, your site must be optimized for mobile users.

If it looks terrible or is super slow on mobile, that’s not good for SEO or your business.

Addressing Common Questions

What Should I Look for When Hiring an SEO Company?

Look for experience, reliability, ethics, transparency about methods, good communication, and a clear understanding of your business goals. Do they ask you good questions? Do you feel comfortable with them?

How Do I Hire a Good SEO Specialist?

First and foremost, get on a Zoom call with them and ask them to assess the opportunity in your niche.

Ask them about how they work, what they recommend, and what they think would work to help your business. 

Why Should I Hire an SEO Specialist?

SEO specialists have the expertise to help you get found on the first page of Google for the keywords that will actually drive revenue and grow your business. 

What Is the Main Objective of SEO?

The three main objective of SEO is to increase business revenue by increasing relevant organic website traffic at each point in the customer journey.

Your SEO consultant may not have access to your revenue numbers. In which case they can use your leads or email sign ups as one of their KPIs. I like to have revenue numbers when measuring performance. However, I can also assess performance based on organic website visitors, impressions on Google, and leads. 

Final Thoughts

Setting clear objectives when hiring an SEO consultant is crucial.

If your SEO consultant isn’t super clear about what you want and what you’re trying to grow, then the strategy may be entirely off.

Your SEO objectives should align with your overall business goals and be realistic and measurable. 

With the right consultant and a clear set of goals, you can drive more traffic, and ultimately, grow your business. 

But remember, SEO is a long-term strategy, and finding the right partner is key to unlocking its full potential.

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