11 Signs You Need to Hire an SEO Consultant for Your Business

Experiencing Economic Hardship

A difficult economy can show the need for a business to hire an SEO consultant. Having a budget for SEO, even if small, can bring long-term returns. Hiring an in-house SEO can be costly and not workable for companies with limited headcount.

An SEO consultant can help companies maintain or improve their online presence cost-effectively and pay for it with a separate budget, like paid media. They can also help maintain or improve a company’s online presence, even during economic hardship.

Hiring an SEO consultant during tough economic times can be a smart investment with a strong potential for long-term ROI.

Your Webpage Is Stuck Beyond Page 2

When your webpage sits on pages 3 to 7, it shows that Google is not understanding what your page is about. An SEO consultant helps to clarify for Google what relevance your page has to the keyword for which you want to rank. We can combine technical SEO, on-page, and off-page techniques to show Google why your page is the best for that keyword search.

A good SEO will look at the pages that Google likes for that keyword and determine how to make your page more likable to Google. Simply tweaking your content or adding a few backlinks can allow Google’s algorithm to decide your page is getting more relevant and begin moving it up in the results.

If the new traffic and visitors react well, your page will keep rising. This extra traffic and, therefore, profits are the value of a good SEO consultant to your web pages.

Noticing Unusual Traffic Patterns

You should hire an SEO consultant if you’re seeing unusual traffic patterns when looking at organic search traffic (in Google Analytics or Google Search Console) and you’re unsure why it’s happening or what to do about it.

This isn’t necessarily the same as seeing a large traffic drop, though that’s concerning too. Instead, you want to watch for any unexpected changes in normal traffic levels from organic search. This can happen for several reasons, including algorithm updates made by Google, changes to your website, errors on your website, problems with Google accessing your website, and more.

An SEO consultant can review the unusual traffic patterns to determine if there are problems that need to be addressed or other opportunities to increase organic traffic.

The Content Isn’t Matching the User Search

One sign a business might want to bring in an SEO consultant is when they find that their content isn’t matching up with what users are looking for.

This is a user search intent issue, and this misalignment can make a difference in ranking content in search engines. An SEO consultant can then figure out what’s happening and help the business create content more in tune with user needs.

Taking straightforward steps like creating an ideal customer, understanding their needs and challenges, and selecting keywords depending on whether customers are looking for information, to buy something, or for other reasons can make a big impact.

Ultimately, this leads to better website performance in search engines and a more satisfied audience.

Losing Traffic After a Website Redesign

After a website redesign, technical issues often result in a loss of traffic, including faulty redirects, duplicate content caused by trailing slashes, or inconsistent application of “www.” An SEO specialist has the expertise to identify and resolve these technical problems.

You can expect some turbulence after a redesign as Google re-evaluates your website, but if there’s no improvement within 1-3 months, it’s essential to investigate the cause. An SEO consultant can analyze and pinpoint on-page issues like content changes, header structuring, metadata, or internal linking modifications, helping the website recover and regain lost traffic.

Being Outranked By Your Competitors

It’s time to hire an SEO consultant when your website is being outranked by your competitors and they’re getting the business instead of you.

While there are many resources available to help you improve your SEO, it will take years to become as effective as someone with the experience to make an impact right away.

SEO consultants can analyze your website (and your competitors’ websites) in-depth and create a customized strategy that gives you the best chance of outranking them.

This can include optimizing your website’s technical elements, finding and incorporating the most effective keyword opportunities, and developing the type of content that motivates your audience to take action.

By hiring an SEO consultant, you’ll have a partner who can guide you through the landscape of Google’s ever-changing algorithms to not only get to the top of the rankings but stay there in the long run.

Observing a Decline in Organic User Acquisition

A website should hire an SEO consultant when they observe a decline in organic user acquisition compared to an increase in paid acquisition.

If the paid acquisition is generating positive results and attracting new users to the business, but the organic acquisition is not, it signifies a missed opportunity.

The users are interested in the business offerings, but the website is not easily discoverable or caters to their needs at various stages of the customer journey.

A competent SEO consultant can offer valuable insights on how to use paid advertising to inform SEO strategies, ‌ attracting more potential customers to the business.

Branding Efforts No Longer Suffice

Branding is crucial for establishing a business’s reputation and identity, but it may not be enough to drive traffic to its website or increase sales. That’s when it may be time to hire an SEO consultant.

For instance, consider a small e-commerce business selling handmade jewelry that experienced a sudden drop in website traffic after a new competitor entered the market. The company relied on word-of-mouth marketing and brand awareness to generate traffic through its blog and social media accounts. Still, it did not compete with the new player.

In this scenario, hiring an SEO consultant could benefit the business in developing a comprehensive SEO strategy, including finding less competitive and relevant opportunities to improve traffic and providing the expertise and guidance to create a digital marketing strategy that complements branding efforts and achieves business goals.

Poor Performing Core Web Vitals

One sign that a business should hire an SEO consultant is when their website’s Core Web Vitals metrics are performing poorly. Google created CWV to help website owners measure and improve the experience of the people who visit their sites. Websites with poor Core Web Vitals may suffer from lower search visibility and a very low organic CTR.

This is a sign that a business needs an SEO consultant because optimizing a website for CWV requires a deep understanding of web performance, technical SEO, and user experience.

An SEO consultant can audit a website, help you identify and address underlying issues and areas of improvement, and provide actionable recommendations such as optimizing images, leveraging browser caching, minimizing JavaScript execution, and addressing layout shifts.

By solving this problem, companies can make their website easier to use, get a better position on search engines, and make more sales.

Lacking Organic Traffic

If you have invested time and effort into creating quality content, building backlinks, and optimizing your website, but you’re still not seeing a consistent flow of organic traffic, it’s time to consider hiring an SEO consultant. This may suggest there are underlying technical issues with your website that impede your search engine visibility or that your content isn’t targeting the right keywords or isn’t optimized for search engines.

An SEO consultant can help you address these issues and develop a tailored strategy to enhance your organic traffic and achieve your business objectives. By analyzing your website and current practices, an SEO consultant can provide valuable insight and recommendations to improve your search engine rankings, increase traffic, and, ultimately, drive more business.

Deciding to Expand Into a New Market

When businesses decide to expand into new markets without previous experience, they make the same mistake. They create a new language version of a website by translating the original one. They replicate what probably works best in their original market.

A few months pass and they face the reality of not meeting expected targets. It is no surprise! Not only did they not keep their users, their potential customers, in mind, but they omitted user search intents in the “new website” creation process.

Frequent reasons are insufficient market knowledge and/or lack of local resources. Sometimes it may be pure ignorance together with an unwillingness to listen to internal people who have a relationship and experience with that market.

Experienced SEOs in international optimization and localization are skilled in creating a strategy and designing a website structure, using the right tools, that match the user’s need and provide content that users can interact with and take desired actions.