If you ask anyone in the digital marketing industry what they think is one of the most important parts of their industry, odds are they will say SEO (search engine optimization). There is good reason for this. SEO can make or break your whole website, and, in this day and age, that could mean making or breaking your whole business. But it a lot of time and energy to keep up and monitor SEO, so it’s not surprising that many companies are looking for outside help to boost their SEO. You’ve probably even asked yourself: What should I look for in an SEO consultant in Utah?
If you’re one of those companies looking for a good SEO consultant, especially in Utah where there are a lot of us, there are a few things you will want to consider while shopping. So, we at Avant8 have put together a list of somethings to look for in an SEO consultant. In the name of transparency, we should say that we are a digital marketing firm with some pretty great SEO services. But it won’t take long for you to see why we are definitely among the ideal (if not the absolute ideal) SEO consultants that you can find in Utah.
So, let’s get started.
But first: a definition of SEO
Not only are we all about transparency, we’re also all about education. We wouldn’t expect you to understand what makes a good SEO consultant without making sure that you know what SEO is first. So, here is a quick and dirty explanation of what it is.
Search engine optimization is all about manipulating things on your site in a way that makes them more visible to search engines and, as a result, to your customers. When you use a search engine like Google or Bing, you do it by typing whatever you’re looking for in the search bar, right? What you type into the search engine is known as a keyword. For example, let’s say that you’re looking for a Wheel of Fortune fan page. Then you would type “Wheel of Fortune fan page” or even just “Wheel of Fortune” into the search bar. That search engine would then sort through every site on the internet (with absolutely insane speeds), looking for ones that have any mention of the Wheel of Fortune keyword on the site. Then it sorts the sites by several different criteria, including how many times the keyword is used and what the wordcount is of the context it’s used in. The most mention of the keyword with the most information get priority. The idea behind good SEO is that your site shows up on the first page of the search, hopefully as one of the first results. You want a first page result, because in all reality, no on goes beyond the first page.
That’s pretty much it for the basics of SEO. Of course, the further you get into it, the more complex it gets. But for our purposes, the above paragraph is basically everything you need to know.
And now this: the qualities of a good SEO consultant
SEO is still a relatively new concept. As a result, it is still something that many marketing firms are still trying to really get their heads around. So, what makes a good SEO consultant? Here are a few things to look for:
- The power of a portfolio. Any digital marketing firm worth its spit has a portfolio on their site. Generally, these are just showing you the websites they’ve designed and programed. But if they don’t have any sites that they’ve done SEO for on there, how could you know what kind of quality their work is in that area? Admittedly, it’s difficult to show SEO on something like a portfolio, but they should be able to talk about the kind of work they did for their clients.
- The dedication of a team. You should ask them if they have an SEO team. A few people whose job is solely to work on your and other clients’ SEO. As mentioned, maintaining SEO is a full-time job, so there should have people who are doing it full time.
- The creativity behind choice. When looking at the SEO services that a consultant offers, ask if it’s just a general SEO service or do they have some options to pick from to help your SEO. There are a lot of ways that you can boost SEO. Not every way is going to work well for your site or your business. A good SEO consultant should offer you plans that are flexible, able to change to fit the style of your company and to adjust as SEO trends change.
- The familiarity of experience. When you’re looking at an SEO consultant’s portfolio, pay attention to what kinds of industries they’ve worked with. We’ve already talked about how flexibility is good and that includes flexibility in who they work with. While there’s nothing wrong with specializing in a particular industry, that may not be a good option for you if that specialty is a different industry from yours. Often the best bet is an SEO consultant who has worked with a bunch of different industries. It shows that they can handle just about anything.
As Utah has hit a bit of a tech boom with more and more big tech companies setting up their headquarters here and with small start-ups popping up all over the place, there have been more and more digital marketing companies and SEO consultants who have come to call Utah home. This makes picking a local one kind of difficult. But if you keep an eye out for these main things that we have laid out, then you should have no problem finding a good SEO company. Or you can skip all of the shopping and give Avant8 a try. You’re already on our site, after all. Why not check our portfolio and our SEO services? Since we’re also a web development company in Salt Lake, we could help with your website too!