SEO consultant : an external partner to boost your Google ranking ?

Should you hire an SEO consultant? A question that may keep you up at night. We tell you all about the role of the SEO consultant in your SEO strategy. Hiring one should give you a boost, new avenues to explore and the assurance that you have a structurally sound site. In this article, you will find the necessary information to help you decide whether you should call an external consultant.

The SEO consultant is an expert in organic search. He knows how search engines work, how to analyze the visibility of a web page and how to improve its rankings. So you call on him for his advice and expertise.

A good SEO consultant will ask you the right questions to understand your industry and business goals. Expect to have to answer lots of questions!

Since he is there to advise you, you must first decide on the digital project for which you want his valuable advice. Time is money, as they say, and just like agencies, SEO consultants often offer expensive rates.

The missions of the consultant are varied and depend on your needs. They range from SEO audit, to log analysis, through the design of your overall SEO strategy, or simply monitoring your positions.

Is SEO your main acquisition channel? Then you know you need a solid SEO strategy! And even if you already have a strong digital team, hiring an SEO consultant will save you time. Their recommendations will form the basis of your digital strategy.

What are the advantages of one or the other? When you have a project that requires the help of an external provider, SEO consultant or agency how to decide which one is more appropriate to your needs?

It's very simple, a consultant acts alone (it's just him) while an agency has at least a full time team and certainly consultants that it can call on on an ad hoc basis.

So, the only question that matters is how big is your digital project? From there, you'll know whether you need the support of an external team or a one-time solo consultant.

Digital strategy

From a macro point of view, an SEO consultant is able to deploy a global digital strategy. This aspect seems absolutely fundamental to us because SEO, although often the main acquisition channel, is obviously not the only one. We particularly invite you to choose a consultant who has experience in other channels, including SEA, the purchase of keywords on Google Ads.

Very often, we see that an SEO consultant can have a specialty in either editorial, technical SEO or netlinking. The best is of course to select the consultant who has the specialty most suited to your needs.

Editorial SEO

The editorial aspect of SEO is vast and very strategic. Editorial SEO includes the disciplines of content writing, on-page optimization to target a given keyword, implementation of semantic cocoons, internal linking and site tree. The role of the consultant is to build a strategic plan for new content, including the on-page SEO optimizations necessary to maximize the impact of that content and to propose an organization and linking of that content so that Google understands that your website is relevant to a given topic.

Technical SEO

The second pillar of SEO is the technical aspect. The editorial side does not go without the technical side. It is useless to optimize your pages if your website has fundamental deficiencies in terms of technical performance, such as a loading speed that is too long (more than 50% of Internet users leave a page that does not load after 3 seconds...It makes you stop!). Your consultant will perform a technical audit in order to detect the errors to be corrected. For this, tools such as ScreamingFrog or Google Search Console are essential.

Netlinking

Netlinking is the 3rd pillar of SEO. It consists of developing the good reputation of your website by creating links from external sites that have a good reputation themselves. This signal tells Google that your website is relevant and of good quality. The SEO consultant will be on the lookout for link opportunities through exchanges, partnerships, and participation in networks of sites (PBN - Private Blog Network).

SEO Training

Having years of practice behind him, the SEO consultant will be able to train your teams on the fundamentals of SEO as well as on his specialty (editorial, technical or netlinking).

A good SEO consultant knows how to use most of the SEO tools on the market. There are many tools specialized in each SEO discipline, some paid, others free. Here are some of them:

There are also comprehensive tools that allow you to perform on-page, technical and netlinking optimizations as well as performance monitoring (traffic, position, revenue, etc.):

• The best SEO tool for SMEs, e-tailers and marketplaces: SmartKeyword ! It was designed for them.
• Other simplistic SEO tools also exist for small businesses: Yoast (WordPress plug-in), rankingCoach, and Optimiz.me.

As mentioned above, each consultant has his own specialty, even if they know all aspects of SEO. It is then for you to specify your SEO project before calling potential candidates. Based on this, you will focus your search on the specialty that suits you best. The questions to ask your candidates (2 or 3 candidates are enough!) are common sense but can help you avoid many pitfalls.

Customer references

Ask for the contact information of one or two current or recent clients with whom you can talk. This will give you an idea of the candidate's working and communication methods as well as the work delivered.

Guarantees or not

Beware of candidates who are ready to guarantee you a 1st position on Google on a given keyword. Search engine optimization is fluctuating and depends on many elements, which makes it an uncertain discipline, especially on very competitive keywords.

Measuring Success

Ask them how and when they plan to report the results of their recommendations. It is absolutely essential for an SEO consultant to master at least Google Analytics and other tools as SmartKeyword.

SmartKeyword offers a simple and technologically powerful online tool, accompanied by a coaching program to professionalize your teams. We are therefore at the crossroads of the agency consultant and the pure tool. Our experts are here to teach your teams the basics of SEO, thanks to a complete coaching program, an e-learning center and an SEO management tool.

The tool is designed for all levels of expertise, from beginners to advanced. It allows you to detect the keywords with the best potential for ranking on the 1st page of Google, proposes editorial and technical improvements to help rank on these keywords, and provides detailed reports of sales, traffic and positions obtained thanks to the SEO actions you take.