Qualities to Look for in an SEO expert
Today, the digital world is where all the action is. From searching for a product online to zeroing down on a brand that provides the same and making an online purchase, everything happens within the few clicks of the mouse. Hence, it has become essential for both established and new brands to give importance to their online presence. Do you want to build upon your social and digital presence for your start-up? Or do you have an established business and you want to strengthen your digital presence? In both the scenarios, you will have to depend on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Simply put, SEO is the vital process that helps you to place your business online and then work towards getting favorable ranks in the top search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You need to deploy a set of SEO online and offline initiatives to attain your objective. However, you can’t be doing the task alone. Today there are online articles and videos, that share DIY (Do It Yourself) SEO tips for both small and big scale companies. These tips always have a risk of backfiring as you don’t have a specialized professional or agency to oversee the execution and it’s after effect. Hence, it’s a smart call to reach out to an SEO expert and seek a customized solution.
Qualities that define an expert SEO expert
Today, there are multiple brands and freelance professionals claiming to be experts. There are situations where companies didn’t get the professional help and desired service that they expected. For this, it’s essential to only join hands with someone who is an SEO expert and knows his/her job well. If you are slightly confused, refer to the following checkpoints that outline an SEO expert.
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#1. Quality experience matters
Advanced online technology also has its downside. Today, almost anyone can launch an SEO-agency and label themselves as SEO experts. However, this doesn’t indicate that they are what they claim. SEO as a subject is vast! It has subtle nuances that an SEO professional or agency needs to focus. It’s not just about adding in keywords. SEO is also about researching and selecting the correct keywords and using it smartly in the online content so that it doesn’t appear forced. To be an expert in all these and other SEO aspects, one needs years of experience.
Simply put, an SEO expert is a professional who has been delving into SEO for many years. He/she has the experience of working for a myriad range of clients from multiple industry verticals, which deepen their insights about SEO and the changing SEO trends. Hence, when you are selecting an SEO expert for your company make sure that he/she has a quality experience. For that, you need to get talking to the person about his/her years of experience, clients worked for and relevant projects delivered. You can also ask for client testimonials directly or search for online reviews. All these will help you assess the experience of an SEO expert.
#2. Expertise in all SEO levels
SEO has three essential levels that an SEO expert should be aware. These three levels are as follows:
- The technical level – It comprises of a website structure that will determine whether your website content can get crawled and indexed quickly by the search engines.
- The on-page optimization level – This level includes the use of HTML tags and the keywords in a way that helps to maximize the search engine organic traffic to the website.
- Off-page optimization level – This level gets associated with link building.
No progressive company with ambitious business development plans would prefer one-dimensional SEO. Most companies today want an SEO expert who will look at a company’s SEO strategy from all the three levels mentioned above to ensure maximum success.
It is essential for search engines to be able to have access to your website content. If a specific content gets buried in some remote corner of the web page, then all your website SEO initiatives might fail. Hence, it is essential for companies as well as SEO experts to know and understand well that every technical restriction and concerns that the search engines have, they should be able to narrate the same to website developers. Only then can these issues get addressed and resolved.
#3. It’s important to be marketing savvy
The moment you cross over the technical problems of a site, SEO will appear similar to marketing. Your company should curate dedicated content in such a way that it etches out the company’s service/product advantage to customers. The content can’t be sales-y and must inspire potential customers to make a purchase. Your content should be appealing to the customers at large. So, in a way, SEO experts will have to know subtle and smart ways to market a company amongst other brands and ensure that its products/services outshine that of other market players.
#4. Quality knowledge, depth, and rich perspective
Many business owners and CEO’s think that their SEO experts should be only concerned about keywords and search engine results. Anything other than this periphery isn’t essential for SEO experts to know. That’s far away from the truth. One of the most crucial aspects that SEO experts need to stay clued into is the Google algorithm changes as that alters the entire online game. So, it is essential to appoint an SEO expert who takes an interest in knowing the changing Google algorithm as well as SEO trends. Only then can he/she customize an apt SEO strategy for a company.
SEO is not separate from other happenings in a company. No company can attain SEO success with this insight or perspective. Hence, an SEO expert should have a deeper understanding of marketing. It will help him/her to align the SEO activities with a brand’s mission and objective. It’s also essential for the expert to keep a holistic idea about the target customer that a brand wants to address and inspire. That aside, other aspects that an SEO expert should have the necessary know-how to include web analytics, social media networking, web design, viral marketing, web development, business models, and content marketing.
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