Organic SEO Consultant: Magician or Technician?
Article by Colette Nichol, Story Strategist, SEO Expert, and Solo Filmmaker
An organic SEO consultant isn’t a magician, but they can help you increase business revenue and get better clients and customers.
They do this by focusing on creating helpful content that has been optimized for both sales and search.
An organic SEO consultant isn’t the same as a technical SEO consultant or someone who focuses on backlink building. If you work with someone who specializes in organic SEO, they’re going to be focusing on making your website content spectacular, not taking the page speed from 2 seconds to .5 seconds.
Page speed and other technical SEO elements can help you get more traffic.
However, surfacing great content that is relevant to the searcher is the core value behind every decision Google makes. So without outstanding website pages and posts, your business won’t be able to dominate the SERPs (search engine results pages).
Table of Contents
- Search Engine Optimization Vocab
- What is Organic SEO, and Why Is It Important?
- What Does an SEO Consultant Do?
- What are Organic SEO Services?
- Importance of Organic SEO Today
- Free vs. Paid Google Listings
- Benefits of Organic SEO
- Google Analytics and SEO
- My Organic SEO Process
- On & Off-Page Strategies
- Organic SEO Consultant Services
- SEO Specialists vs. Digital Marketers
- Role of an SEO Consultant
- Factors to Consider Before Hiring an SEO Consultant
- Advantages of Hiring an Organic SEO Consultant
- Cost of Hiring an SEO Consultant
- Organic SEO Tips for Better Visibility
- Common Issues That Prevent Sites from Ranking
- The Risks of Not Hiring Qualified SEO Help
- Common Questions about Organic SEO
Going to Google
Typically, when someone has a problem and they need a solution, the first thing they do is go to Google.
You’ve got some weird rash on your hand. Do you call your doctor, or do you go to Google?
You’re thinking of buying a car. Do you drive out to the car lot, or do you go to Google?
We both know the answer. Every problem results in a Google search. An organic SEO consultant focuses on where the existing search volume aligns with your products or services and creates or modifies your website content to attract targeted traffic.
Alternatives to Showing Up in the Moment of Need
All around the world, there are people who are in the midst of a search frenzy that’s relevant to your business.
These people are trying to get their problems solved, but if you’re not doing SEO, they won’t find you.
If you’ve never done SEO before, or you’ve never had a good SEO strategy created by someone who knows what they’re doing, then you might be skeptical of SEO and what a consultant can do for you.
In fact, it would be weird if you weren’t a little skeptical.
So in this post, I’m going to break down the basics of what an organic SEO consultant is, what they can do for you, and the topics you need to understand to make an informed decision when contracting an SEO consultant.
🌟 Related Post: What is an SEO Consultant and Why Are they Important?
Before We Begin, Let’s Get Some Search Engine Optimization Vocab Out of the Way
If you’re new to SEO, you probably don’t know all the weird lingo.
And, yes, it’s weird. So here’s a quick breakdown of some of the words and phrases that SEO experts use when rapidly monologuing about the internet.
| Searcher Intent | What the person sitting at their computer is actually trying to find online when they type something into Google. |
| User | The person typing stuff into Google. |
| Content | Any website page or blog post on your site. |
| SERPs | The pages that come up on Google (or any other search engine) with all the search results. SERPs stands for Search Engine Results Pages. |
| SEO | SEO refers to the person who does SEO; they’re called an SEO, i.e. a Search Engine Optimizer. And it refers to the act of optimizing content for search engines. So I’m an SEO who does SEO. Silly, right? |
| Backlinks | These are links from other websites that point toward your website. The internet is full of low-quality websites that are used solely to create backlinks. Google doesn’t like this. |
| Backlink building | This is when someone creates a strategy to get more websites to put a link to your website on their site. Doing this can boost a website, but it’s a grey area and not as powerful in the long term as creating stupendous content. |
| On-page Optimization | This refers to anything you do to a website page that makes it more likely to surface in search. |
| Off-page Optimization | This refers to anything you do elsewhere on the internet to send more authority markers or link juice toward your website. Even doing something as simple as making social media profiles that contain your keywords and a link to your website could be considered off-page optimization. |
| Site Title | This is the website page title that shows up on the SERPs, i.e. on Google or Bing etc. This isn’t the same as the page title or article title, which can be modified inside your website builder. |
| Time on Page | Time on page refers to how long a user stays on a website page. You usually want this to be at least over 1 minute on average, but the longer the better. This is a key metric to improve when doing organic SEO. |
| Search Volume | Search volume is the number of people searching for a particular keyword or cluster of related keywords. |
| PPC | Pay per click is when people pay for Google ads where the pricing is based on clicks. |
| Bounce | A bounce is when someone lands on your website and then quickly leaves your website without doing anything. You’re typically trying to reduce the bounce rate of your website and your important pages. |
| Pillar Page | A pillar page is a comprehensive long-form website page that covers almost everything a person might need to know about a topic. It links out to other smaller but relevant pages around the same topic |
OK, we’ve covered the most important terminology.
Now, let’s dive into the brass tacks of organic SEO.
What is Organic SEO, and Why Is It Important?
Organic SEO refers to the on-page optimization techniques any website owner can use to increase time on page and provide a better experience to the user.
Organic SEO techniques include all of the following practices:
- creating helpful, high-quality content hubs, i.e. doing a pillar page strategy
- ensuring that pages on a website are interlinked in a way that provides value to the user
- linking out to authority websites when relevant to the user
- creating site titles that clearly identify what the article or page is about
- creating a site title strategy that focuses on including critical keywords throughout the entire website
- creating a home page that is correctly structured to spread link juice to the key “money” pages
- creating well-structured “money” pages full of rich and helpful content that solves searchers’ problems
- creating content for all stages in the customer journey
- optimizing existing content so that it serves the needs of the searcher and
- creating a keyword strategy that aligns with a business’s revenue goals
- doing competitor keyword research and selecting the most relevant and low-competition keywords to generate more targeted traffic
- creating custom infographics and images for blog posts in order to increase time on page and improve the user experience
- creating or consulting on how to create SEO-optimized videos for website pages and posts in order to increase time on page and boost conversions
- balancing the conversion strategy with the SEO strategy
What Does an SEO Consultant Do?
What an SEO consultant does depends on your particular website and what type of consultant they are.
If you have a website with a bunch of terrible backlinks that are negatively affecting your rankings, the SEO consultant might spend time disavowing the link. Whereas if you’re coming to the SEO game with a clean slate, your SEO consultant will be spending most of their time creating a solid organic SEO strategy and helping you to build up outstanding content that serves the needs of the searcher.
On a basic level, an SEO consultant helps you achieve your business goals by increasing your website traffic.
What are organic SEO services?
Organic SEO services include:
- article writing
- website assessments
- keyword strategy
- article template creation
- pillar page strategies
- website restructuring or guidance on how to restructure the website
- page and post optimization
- white hat off-page optimization.
Do You Have a Website Traffic Problem or a Conversion Problem?
Before you decide that you need more traffic, it’s important to take a look under the hood and figure out if you have a traffic problem or a conversion problem.
Open up your Google Analytics and see how many unique, organic visitors you’re getting every month. Then see what pages these visitors are landing on. Now, look at your sales or sales call conversions.
What are your numbers? For example, if you’re only getting 100 organic visitors per month and almost all of them are landing on your home page, then yes, you have a traffic problem.
But if you’re getting 5000 organic visitors per month and they’re landing on a variety of blog posts and landing pages that are relevant to what you sell, you might have a conversion problem.
E-commerce websites are typically aiming for a sales conversion rate of 2%.
While a high-end service provider is typically aiming for an email conversion rate of 2% and a first call conversion rate of .25% or lower.
So before you do anything, see if you can figure out what your website’s conversion rate is and whether you have a traffic problem or a conversion problem. Not to be a pillar of doom, but you might have both problems. But luckily, they can both be fixed!
🌟 Related Post: Increase Traffic to Your Website with SEO
Importance of Organic SEO Today
People look for answers on Google, and that habit isn’t going anywhere.
So if you’ve already maxed out word of mouth and social media advertising, SEO is the next dragon to befriend.
I’ve noticed that extremely good SEO strategies are rare today, which means that there’s plenty of room in most niches to create a high-traffic website and dominate the SERPs.
Why is it rare to find a website with a truly solid SEO strategy?
Most SEO agencies seem to prefer to focus on backlink building and other off-page tactics than create extraordinary content that actually delights the user. Creating outstanding content requires more specialized knowledge, creativity, and time. And creating a pillar page strategy that is optimized with premium evergreen videos requires much more high-level expertise than sending out thousands of emails to low-quality websites asking for links.
But if you want to become a towering force for good, focus on creating outstanding content with a solid SEO strategy, and the traffic will come.
🌟 Related Post: 19 Video SEO Tips for Beginners
Free vs. Paid Google Listings
Many people think that they’re hiring an SEO agency to do organic SEO for them, but in fact, they’re hiring an agency that focuses on PPC.
A free Google listing means that you’ve earned a position on the first page of Google, thanks to the high-quality content you’ve created or because your business shows up on a Google map.
On the other hand, a paid Google listing is an advert you’ve created in the Google Ads Manager.
You pay for that ad based on how many people click on it and the “auction” price you’re willing to pay. Google Ads can range from a few cents per click to hundreds of dollars per click. When you take the ad down, the traffic disappears. While with organic SEO, your traffic won’t disappear overnight because you’ve earned it by being helpful.
Helpful Content Update
Google is so concerned with your content being helpful that they created a “Helpful Content Update” in 2022.
The algorithm update was solely focused on trying to surface more content that truly helps the searcher. When you focus on creating unique, robust, helpful content, you can rest assured that your traffic will grow steadily and not disappear overnight. Unlike with ads, there’s no off switch.
Google Search is always working to better connect people to helpful information. To this end, we’re launching what we’re calling the “helpful content update” that’s part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.
-GOOGLE SEARCH CENTRAL BLOG
Benefits of Organic SEO
There are plenty of benefits to doing organic SEO. The first one is getting more traffic to your website that is ready to buy or get in touch.
Most business owners hire an SEO consultant because they want to grow their business with SEO. So increased revenue is typically the most important benefit of a good organic SEO strategy.
However, there are other benefits to doing organic SEO, which include increased authority in your industry, an easier sales process, more consistent sales and leads, and greater exposure for the business, which can lead to speaking opportunities.
Another benefit of doing organic SEO is that your website becomes a way better sales tool.
So making sales with your existing audience or word-of-mouth prospects also becomes much easier.
Google Analytics and SEO
If you’re like most website owners, you’ve got Google Analytics set up. You’ve looked at it once or twice, felt overwhelmed and then ignored it.
As of this writing, the most important thing for you to do with Google Analytics is to ensure you have the new version of analytics set up. You need to have GA4 (Google Analytics 4) set up by the summer of 2023 if you want to make sure your SEO consultant can get all the data they need.
Once you’ve sorted out your GA4 analytics, make sure you also set up Google Search Console, as this is a helpful tool for your consultant.
Google Analytics allows your SEO expert to see how people get to your website, how much time they spend on important pages, where they leave the website, and whether the traffic is relevant.
I can learn a lot about your website and business just by looking at your Google analytics. For example, I was recently looking at the analytics of a potential client whose business is in the area of health coaching. The business owner and health expert has been blogging for years, so her website gets decent traffic. She has a few thousand organic visitors per month.
However, the traffic she gets is almost entirely unrelated to what she’s selling.
Meanwhile, she has one very low-volume blog post highly relevant to what she sells.
This low-volume post has converted visitors into sales. However, it can’t bring in a pile of new leads because the topic is low-volume. While the high-volume posts drive traffic but not revenue. So what does she need? More posts similar to the one that drives sales but with a much higher volume!
Having looked under the hood of her website, I know what kind of content to avoid at all costs.
And I know where we need to focus her content-building efforts. Plus, after looking at the keyword opportunities available in her niche, I know it’s possible to generate traffic that turns into sales.
My Organic SEO Process, i.e. How to Get Consistent Organic Traffic
My organic SEO process is focused on identifying the most important keywords for your business and creating money pages for those words.
I choose the keywords that are closest to cash and then create high-value content around those keywords. After creating high-quality money pages, I create supporting pages that are more informational in nature and lower on the customer journey. In addition, I ensure your home page is optimized and your website structure is optimized to send link juice where it needs to go and provide a great user experience.
My pre-SEO background is in website design and video production.
I’m a story strategist, solo filmmaker and SEO expert, which means I usually combine story, video, and a solid keyword strategy in order to get my clients excellent results. To get your website ranking and converting, me and my small team do a lot of different things. It would take many thousands of words to describe everything I do as an organic SEO consultant as well as the assets that I produce with my team, but here’s the bullet point version:
Organic SEO Tasks
- website assessment
- home page assessment
- goals assessment
- keyword strategy
- pillar page strategy
- site title therapy
- time-on-page improvements
- page and post-optimization
- interlinking improvements
- updating alt tags and meta descriptions
- improving URL structure
- premium video SEO
- YouTube SEO and channel optimization
- video launch planning
- custom image creation
- conversion optimization – blogs, footers, pop-ups
- home page upgrades
- website structure upgrades
- lead magnet improvements
- pop-up or opt-in improvements
- email follow-up assessment
- email automation
- automation implementation and advice
- sales video sequences
- copywriting with keywords
If you have good marketing and a good product or service, then you don’t need to spend tons of time selling.
Your marketing and your product will sell themselves. The basic thesis behind doing great organic SEO is that your website should become a sales machine that does the heavy lifting for you.
For a website owner who wants to go all-in with SEO and has a business with a high-opportunity niche, I recommend doing every single one of the steps in my SEO strategy.
But if you’re working with a smaller budget or just want to dip your toes in the water, you should start with a website assessment, keyword strategy, and some key pieces of content.
On-Page Strategies
On-page strategies are anything you do to improve the experience a user has on a particular page while also increasing the keyword depth.
Usually, you want a page to rank for multiple keywords. The deeper the content, the more keywords you typically can rank for on that page.
Off-Page Strategies
Off-page strategies are anything you do to point more authority markers toward your website.
From getting your website listed in online industry list services to updating your Google Business profile to making sure your business has social media profiles that are optimized, there are many off-page strategies, you can do to increase your website’s authority.
Backlink building tends to be an area that many SEOs spend a lot of time.
However, I’ve found that you can get outstanding results with quality content alone. You don’t have to send thousands of emails begging for backlinks when your content is miles ahead of everyone else’s.
Organic SEO Consultant Services
Usually, an SEO consultant will do a basic assessment of your website, your business, and your keyword profile and provide you with a proposal or package that will suit your needs.
Some SEOs have ongoing service packages, while others work on a project basis. An SEO consultant will recommend which SEO services best suit your needs based on your goals and the current state of your website.
In most cases, you’ll need the following services:
- website assessment
- keyword plan
- pillar page plan
- content upgrades and optimization
If you want to dramatically boost your traffic and use SEO as a main business growth driver, you’ll likely want to add premium video to your plan.
SEO Specialists vs. Digital Marketers
SEO specialists understand how to get you more traffic and optimize that traffic so that it converts into email subscribers or sales.
While digital marketers tend to have a more jack-of-all-trades skill set that focuses on creating content that converts, funnels, email marketing, and social media marketing.
Role of an SEO Consultant
The role of an SEO consultant is to discover your most important business goals and create an SEO strategy that can contribute to your achieving those goals.
Factors to Consider Before Hiring an SEO Consultant
You should be clear about your goals and whether you want short-term wins or long-term results.
You should also be aware of the traffic potential that exists for your niche and the level of competition. For example, if you’re a health expert, you should know that this space has a higher authority standard than most other spaces. You need to know how hard it will be to get your website ranking and what the potential ROI is so you can decide if it’s worth it.
Advantages of Hiring an Organic SEO Consultant
If you want to show up on the first page of Google, and you don’t want to spend years learning how to do SEO by yourself then hire an SEO consultant.
The biggest advantage of hiring an organic SEO consultant is that it’s going to save you a ton of time. The next advantage is that you’re much more likely to achieve your goals if you hire a good SEO consultant.
Finally, if you want to make sure you don’t get penalized by Google for some black-hat tactic you didn’t know your SEO team was doing, it’s best to work with someone who specializes in organic SEO.
Cost of Hiring an SEO Consultant
The cost of working with an SEO consultant varies depending on your industry and the services that you require.
The cost ranges from $1000 per month to $50,000 per month. If you’re a Fortune 500 company and you want to 10x your traffic, that will cost more than if you’re a small business owner who wants to come up on local search. SEO should provide you with a good return on investment. It’s important to know what your potential revenue growth can be with SEO and compare that to the cost.
Organic SEO Tips for Better Visibility and Google Rankings
If you want to rank on Google and get your existing rankings higher, then you need to do the following:
1. Make sure your keywords are aligned with what you sell.
2. Create content hubs (pillar page strategy) where you show expertise in one main zone to gain authority for your website in that zone.
3. Once you’ve gained authority for one umbrella topic, build another content hub.
4. Make sure your site titles are on point.
5. Have a good author bio with authority markers on every blog post.
6. Include all relevant keywords in your articles and pages.
7. Make pages that rank for multiple keywords.
8. Include premium video that’s SEO optimized on your most important pages.
9. Update your social profiles.
10. Get on industry lists.
11. Write outstanding content that’s actually helpful.
12. Answer the “people also ask” questions on Google.
13. Look at the competition and create content that’s better than theirs.
14. Include custom images and graphics in your content.
15. Make sure your home page is well structured and points towards your money pages.
16. Ensure your website isn’t super slow.
17. Focus on increasing time on page for important money pages.
These are just a few organic SEO tips, but they’re also some of the main things that I see websites ignoring or doing poorly. Taking care of these elements and following these tips will make any website rank higher on Google.
Common Issues That Prevent Sites from Ranking
There are a few things that can stop a website from ranking or just slow it down.
Here are a few issues:
- Low-quality unoriginal content with not enough keywords
- Poor site titles
- Long nasty URLs
- Slow website speed
- New website, just needs time and content to rank
- Too many topics, all over the place
- Extremely competitive niche
- YMYL issues, i.e. you’re in the health or money sector and you don’t have enough authority markers to compete
- E-A-T issues – you’re not showing enough Expertise, Authority, or Trustworthiness markers
- Low-quality backlinks from working with a low-quality SEO agency
- Poor website structure
- Poor home page structure
- No keyword strategy
The Risks of Not Hiring Qualified SEO Help
The number one risk of not hiring qualified SEO help is that your website won’t get found by your ideal clients. That’s probably where you are right now.
The next risk comes from hiring someone who doesn’t have ethics or experience. If you hire the wrong person, they might create low-quality content or rely on sketchy tactics. Make sure that whoever you work with is ethical and wants you to win long-term rather than just give you a short-term boost. The easiest ways to create short-term wins are also the sketchiest.
Common Questions about Organic SEO and Working with a Consultant:
How much would it cost to hire an SEO consultant?
It can cost anywhere from $1000 per month to $50,000 per month or more. Find someone who is within your price range and is ethical and experienced.
What skills should I look for in an SEO consultant before hiring?
You can’t really assess an SEO’s skills if you have no skills yourself. So you should be looking to find someone who has gotten their clients results and who you trust.
Where can I hire an SEO consultant in 2023?
You can hire an SEO consultant by doing a few different Google searches and making appointments with a few consultants with websites that give you useful information. Choose to work with the person who seems to be the most ethical and who had gotten their clients good results.
Does Google Analytics bounce rate matter with SEO ranking?
You don’t want to have a high bounce rate if you’re trying to rank a website page. However, you can reduce your bounce rate by improving your content. That said, in my experience time on page is a more important ranking factor than bounce rate.
How do you know what will make a website rank higher on Google?
An experienced SEO expert knows what makes a website rank higher because they’ve put in the time experimenting with websites and seeing results. If you combine training with experience, you end up creating a process for assessing websites and their rankings. It’s no different from being a baseball coach. You look at an athlete and assess their performance and create a strategy to improve that performance.
SEO isn’t a dark art. It’s a logical process with a lot of best practices one can follow.
Is SEO Worth It in 2023?
You might wonder if SEO will still be effective today and in the future. Is SEO going to become obsolete like MySpace? Will it just stop bringing you leads all of a sudden?
I don’t see that happening anytime soon, if ever. Right now, there are very few companies doing SEO properly. This means that there is a massive amount of opportunity to get your website ranking on the first page of Google for your most important money topics.
SEO isn’t a dark art. It’s a logical process with a series of critical steps.
Work with an SEO Consultant
So at this point, you might be trying to decide whether or not to work with an SEO consultant.
If you already have a successful business and would like to expand your global or national audience, I’d love to hear from you. I work with experts who want to make a bigger impact and attract more organic traffic so they can reach more people with their message. At Story Envelope Media, we focus on elevating messages that matter and driving traffic that will help you grow your business.
There’s no sense in having tons of traffic that doesn’t actually convert.
So if you’re interested in finding out if SEO could work in your niche, please schedule a call.
☎️ Schedule a 15-minute Introductory Call to Discuss Your SEO Options
Use SEO to Achieve Your Business Goals
Organic SEO refers to the on-page optimization techniques used to improve user experience, increase time on page, and boost traffic.
Some of the practices involved in organic SEO include creating high-quality content, interlinking pages, creating clear site titles with relevant keywords, and optimizing content for searchers’ needs.
A good organic SEO strategy should also include creating content for all stages of the customer journey, selecting relevant and low-competition keywords, and using custom infographics and videos to improve the user experience. It’s is important to balance the conversion strategy with the SEO strategy.
Summary of Key Points:
- Work with an organic SEO consultant if you want to increase traffic and revenue.
- Know your goals before you contact an SEO consultant.
- An organic SEO consultant will focus on creating helpful high-quality content based on a solid keyword strategy.
- On-page and off-page SEO strategies are important; however, having poor quality content cannot be fixed by off-page strategies.
- Make sure your SEO strategy is focused on driving relevant traffic to your money pages.
Next Steps
Would you like to find out if SEO is right for your business?
If you have a growing business and would like to increase the national or international audience for your work, please CLICK HERE to schedule a 15-minute call.
I work with experts and expertise-based businesses in the US and Canada who want to make more of an impact with their work by reaching a larger audience through organic search. If you want to grow your business organically and dominate your niche on Google, please reach out, I’d love to hear about your business goals.
About the Author
Hi! I’m Colette Nichol. I’m a solo filmmaker, SEO, story strategist, and digital marketer based out of rainy Vancouver, Canada. I’ve been helping small local businesses and global brands since 2014.
In 2017, I started applying SEO to my work with clients and in my own business. The results were extraordinary, and I got obsessed!
If you’re interested in working together, please reach out. I’d love to hear about your business goals to see how we can help.
We currently take on a maximum of one new client per month, so please schedule a call early to ensure we can help with your project.
