logo
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean feugiat dictum lacus, ut hendrerit mi pulvinar vel. Fusce id nibh

Mobile Marketing

Pay Per Click (PPC) Management

Conversion Rate Optimization

Email Marketing

Online Presence Analysis

Fell Free To contact Us
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean feugiat dictum lacus

029 2176 2077

hello@top-space-cardiff.co.uk

2 Fitzalan Road Cardiff CF24 0EB

Top

How do you know whether you’ve hired an SEO expert or not?

How do you know whether you’ve hired an SEO expert or not?

 

Introduction

So it does go without saying that right throughout the United Kingdom, there are quite simply a mass of SEO consultants. There are quite literally thousands of seo consultants.

And this is a bit like saying there are a huge number of hairdressers in the U.K , the only problem is some hairdressers will have you walking out of the salon, thinking that your barnet looks rather brilliant, and you may walk down the road feeling a million dollars.

Yet, there are some other hairdressers, lets say that are much less skilled, that might make you think that you don’t want to step outside your house again,  because they’ve made a right mess of your hair.

And this is exactly the same when it comes to search engine optimisation, there are some are simply quite brilliant seo experts out there, which can help your business to drum up more sales.

Then on the other hand, there are a mass of seo consultants, which are all intents and purposes winging it.

 

 

 

So this begs the question, how do you go about finding a true seo expert?  

Well, we think the truth is most definitely in the pudding, meaning that you only can know when you’ve hired an ace of an seo expert, when they start to generate more sales for your business.

However there are some things you can do to try and work out if you are dealing with an expert, or someone who’s just blagging it.

So, do read on, as some helpful pointers can be gleaned from this article. What we would say, before we go on any further is this, whether you hire an seo agency, that employs many people, or a freelancer working in a spare bedroom, it doesn’t matter if there a freelancer or large marketing business, it all boils down to the quality of the work.

The search engine optimisation work must be top quality, so you really do need to take your time finding a company, make sure that they are offering you quality work.

 

So one way of knowing if the work is quality or not, is you could do it yourself? 

You could learn seo yourself, yet take it from that it takes hundreds of hours to learn, its not as simple as some people would have you believe.

And saying learn seo yourself, well,  that’s a bit like saying to someone, don’t use  a translator, go and learn the language yourself. Well, not everyone has the time for that, and that’s why its outsourced to agencies like ours.

But, again, the work must be super high quality, it must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, it must also be approved by Googles EAT, it must also not be deemed as “spam” by Google’s algorithm, so as you can see, Google, and  the other major search engines, well they go to great lengths to make sure spam is removed, websites that have spam are penalised, and the businesses with partner with good seo consultants, are rewarded with higher rankings, if the work is good quality.

 

p

 

So, lets get down to the main point on this article, what is an SEO expert?

So first things first, what is an seo expert? Well, quite simply put it somebody who understands how Google’s algorithm works, that has spent huge amount of time practising different methods, to get businesses to the top of Google. That’s to say, they most likely have learnt not just by reading hundreds of seo articles online, but also will have most likely had test websites, where they have tested their methods, to see what seo methods work, and which ones don’t.

An seo expert is somebody who has a huge amount of experience, and can clealy demonstrate that they have got many businesses the top of Google. The really good seo consultants will be able to demonstrate they got businesses the top of Google in highly competitive business sectors, such as the car insurance industry, legal sector, or perhaps for e-commerce website, selling products in a very competitive business sector, such as a company which sells clothing online.

 

 

The seo expert should be able to clearly show, they have moved many businesses higher in Google’s  search engine result pages (SERPs).

So the name of the game is obviously to get businesses higher up in Google’s Serps, an seo expert should be able to show they can do this for many different companies, and this will obviously demonstrate that have the skill set to help your business to get onto the first page of Google.

However as a business, you need to make sure that they are using white hat methods.

 

q

 

Competitive keywords  

As earlier mentioned,, if the seo expert can demonstrate they have managed to get many businesses onto the first page of Google, and for highly competitive keywords, such as “car insurance” then this again shows clearly that they have a lots of knowledge in what they do, as long as they use white hat methods to get those business there.

 

The seo expert should have a huge amount of knowledge, experience and most likely have spent hundreds of hours testing their methods. Some might describe this as honing their craft, yet what’s for sure, is you can read about seo, and read some more, and some more, yet, nothing really compare to registering some domain names, and testing your seo methods yourself, as its only then you get a sense for what works and what doesn’t.

 

How does someone become an SEO Expert? How do you learn the Matrix?

 

This is a really good question, we would say just comes down to trial and error, obviously you can’t take a trial-and-error approach with a client’s website, as they are paying to see results.

What you can do however, is use your own domain names, as test websites, to move websites up in different industries, you may even if you get those domain names to page one of Google. If these websites do get onto the first page, you may, sometimes be able to sell, those domain names, to a business that may want to use the domain name, lets say “name of  business sector  + city name”  so that they could use the domain names to help improve their seo.

That’s if there has been sufficient seo strength assigned to that domain name, then the next business that uses that same domain name, may see there seo improved. Of course, the work needs to be white hat.

 

p

 

A huge amount of reading

To become an expert at search engine optimisation, you need to do a huge amount of reading, you need to visit many quality websites, we would highly recommend Search Engine Roundtable, Moz and also Backlinko, if you are to start learning how seo is done.

So you do need to spend hundreds of hours reading various articles, reading about everything from how to build backlinks, how to write content marketing, and how to improve your onsite seo.

 

Spend time reading about how the search engines work

Search engines, well there more complicated than any car engine that’s for sure, a good seo consultant should know a lot about the following:

–        Googlebot, how it works, and what it does

–        Quality content marketing, when its done right, it can be truly effective

–        Write for the customer, not for the search engines

–        Various Google updates, the seo consultant should know about the more significant updates, the Google Pande update,  the Google Penguin update, the Google Hummingbird update

–        How Google’s algorithm penalises low quality seo

The seo expert needs to have a good understanding of how Google’s algorithm works, how its been refined and improved over years, from the days of Google’s PageRank, through to more recent updates, such as the introduction of how Google’s RankBrain, using AI is now changing SEO. 

 

 

“The only way the know-how Google algorithm really works is to have a bunch of test websites, that you own, and test various seo methods out yourself.”

 

p

 

 University  

Some people would have studied SEO at university, but in our opinion we think is far better to learn about seo yourself, have a bunch of test websites and you simply test different white hat methods, until you find a process that works for you.

You could learn seo at university, but really, we think its better to study yourself, test your seo methods, and just keep your seo knowledge as up to date as you can.

For us, learning SEO at university did not appeal to us at all, a but for some others, it may be their route to success, and a great career.

 

 

p

 

Why are really good SEO consultants so expensive?

The simple fact of the matter is there are thousands of so-called “SEO Experts” out there, they may well be in Scotland, in England and in Wales, the country is full of them.

But the problem is this, in reality, we think are very few that there are actually any good, that can cut the mustard, that know exactly what they’re talking about, and that have a huge level of experience in doing what they do.

so what we would say is there’s a massive difference between somebody who talks the talk and then can walk the walk.

So really good seo consultants are normally hired by large plc companies, or they work for themselves as consultants, and the really good seo consultants well can charge high daily rates simply because if they are good at what they do, their services will be in high demand.

 

q

 

Skills An SEO expert will need

 

As you are probably aware already, organic SEO can be split into a broad areas including:

 

  •   Technical SEO

An seo consultant needs to have a good knowledge of technical seo, so for example, making sure there’s a site map and every page and blog post can be crawled and indexed.

  •   On-Site SEO

A really good seo expert should have knowledge about to improve the businesses onsite seo, sometimes referred to as on page seo.

  •  Off-Site SEO

 

An seo expert should be able to build quality backlinks.

 

Here some of the other areas that an seo consultant should have knowledge about as well

 

 Page speed and performance optimisation

It’s really important that the seo expert that you hire understands how we can make your website load faster on smartphones. If a website loads just a second slower, well, this could mean a competitor may rank higher than your business.

 

  •  Crawl budget optimisation

Each website will get crawled and indexed, by Googlebot at different intervals, it does depend on your business, your seo consultants’ job is to make sure every page can get crawled and indexed.

 

  •   Site architecture  

The seo expert that you hire should have understanding of site architecture, and how to create main pages in order to  improve your businesses seo.

 

  •     Keyword research

The seo consultant should have knowledge of how to carry out keyword research

 

  •     On-page optimisation

They should also have a good understanding of the following:

  •     They should create an internal linking strategy
  •     How to improve a websites User experience
  •     They should write a plan on how they will build backlinks for the business
  •     They should write a “content calendar” and mention what they intend to write about, and when they will publish that work.
  •   They should have knowledge about how to build citations   
  •     Google My business creation, plus how they will optimise that listing

 

Share