What Are SEO Consulting Services?

December 03, 2019

If you’ve been researching SEO services you already know there are a lot of optimization options. Like a confounding amount of options. And if you’ve already been using SEO on your website you know it ain’t easy.

The most frustrating thing for some business is knowing past success doesn’t guarantee future success because SEO in 2019 won’t be exactly the same as 2018. And it’s sure to keep evolving in 2020. Even if you have someone in-house with the technical expertise to carry out SEO tasks, they may not have the time to keep up with the latest changes and strategies. If that’s the case, it’s probably time to call an SEO consultant.

An SEO consultant is an optimization expert that works one-on-one with a client to identify improvements that can be made to boost a website’s ranking in search engines. It’s the ideal option for businesses that have the resources to handle the day-to-day SEO tasks but need help identifying what needs to be done and how to do it.

What SEO Consulting Services Can You Expect?

Each SEO consulting agency will have their own unique service offering. That said, you can expect the services to be highly customized to your exact needs or challenges. In the end, the consultant should leave you with some sort of direction for your SEO strategy.

Many SEO consultants offer four primary services:

Analysis

There’s no way an SEO consultant can advise a business on how to improve SEO without analyzing the current website and contributing factors. Analysis will include:

  • Existing website architecture
  • Keywords and terms
  • Current rank in search engines for targeted keyword terms
  • On-page content
  • Website analytics
  • Links to the website
  • Customer base

Analysis can be much more broad, but the points above should be covered.

Technical SEO Plan

Some companies have done great keyword research and put effort into building content so that their website reflects the best keywords. Despite getting these key elements right, a website may still not rank well because of technical issues. 

An SEO consultant should have the technical expertise to identify these backend issues and how to fix them. Correcting technical SEO problems like slow loading pages is not only good for SEO it will also improve the user experience. 

On-Page Plan

An SEO consultant should use an on-page SEO checklist for 2019 (or whatever year it currently is) to thoroughly assess what the website tells search engine spiders. A website can be technically perfect but if you don’t have content on the page that uses your keywords in the right way ranking is impossible. The consultant can help you put together a content plan with topics that feature top keywords, attracts the target market and builds authority. 

The other benefit of optimized content is backlinks, which are also necessary for top ranking. High quality content that appeals to the target market is more likely to naturally gain backlinks.

Training

A good SEO consultant won’t just give you a plan of action. They’ll also help your team learn how to implement the suggested strategies so that everything is done correctly. This is a key difference between SEO consultants and SEO agency services. When you hire an agency they are doing the work for you so training isn’t normally part of the service package.

Keep in mind that an SEO consultant is an advisor that’s contracted for a short period of time, and the longer you use their services the more expensive it will be. It could be just an hour, day, week or month. Usually with SEO consultants there’s flexibility in how long you can tap into their expertise.

Should You Work With a Local SEO Consultant?

One question that may come up early in the process is whether or not you should use a local SEO consultant. Since everything is based online it’s not a necessity, and in many mid to small sized cities there are no local SEO consultants.  

Working with a local SEO does come with one big benefit for brick-and-mortar businesses. The consultant should be very familiar with the local industries, population, economy, etc. Intimate knowledge of the area can help an SEO consultant make more informed suggestions about your local search optimization strategy.

The Austin SEO consultants at SearchRPM are experts that have worked on hundreds of websites across dozens of industries. We’ve seen it all! Our one-on-one SEO consulting service is designed to give you specific advice that addresses the reasons behind stalled rankings and subpar conversions. Just an hour with one of our SEO consultants can get your web pages moving up the rankings.

Get SEO consulting with a 100% money back  guarantee!

Article author

Michael Ramirez is the Founder of SearchRPM, an Austin, TX based search marketing company that’s well-versed in Search Engine Optimization best practices. You can follow Michael Ramirez on Twitter @searchrpm to see what he’s up to next.