When it comes to a company’s success, its ability to get its name out there and support its online presence is key. And in this realm, there’s a magic phrase that can help you do just that. Say it with me now: Organic SEO services.

Legend has it that if you whisper these words into the ear of any professional SEO consultant, their hair will immediately stand on end, equally excited and overwhelmed at the endless possibilities of an organic SEO strategy spanning from Google Analytics flows to your search engine ranking.

This guy gets it:

As the look on his face will tell you, though, many internal digital marketing consultants have trouble achieving their goals on their own. Think of all the different projects and campaigns they work to spearhead, and organic search engine optimization is a monster all its own.

In these situations, it’s best to look to the experts. Hiring an organic SEO consultant or an SEO consultancy to push your brand up in the search results represents a considerable advantage, helping your company improve its online profile and provide your audience with high-quality content.

But — a word to the wise — not all SEO consulting services are what they’re cracked up to be, and it’s important to find a partner that can truly work to enable your brand’s digital marketing mission.

Why Is Organic SEO Important?

You may be tempted to believe that organic SEO is dying out. And we agree that we’ve been droning on about it for years, but that’s because it still works. With an organic content strategy,  you’re creating assets around the questions people are already asking.

While search engine optimization can take a few months to show results, there’s no doubt that organic content should be a core part of your marketing efforts. Over half of all traffic to websites still comes from organic search, per BrightEdge. Depending on your business goals, you could certainly combine organic SEO with social media and search engine marketing, but it’s important to understand that they complement each other.

Plus, if you’re organically ranking for a sought-after keyword in your industry, you can save on those paid ads — big time. So it’s best to allocate your resources wisely and consider your current brand assets, content marketing strategies and financial goals. For many brands, organic search will remain the business driver for years to come, so it should always be a cornerstone of your plans.

Organic vs Paid Search: What’s the Difference?

When you hear of organic and paid search, you’re usually referring to vastly different content types and cost structures to reach users searching on Google or Bing.

To drive organic traffic, you’ll usually create keyword-optimized content, implement proper internal linking and maybe even throw in some offsite optimization through guest blogging or podcast appearances.

Paid search traffic, on the other hand, requires you to drive traffic to a landing page or blog, which means you need to identify the right keywords and audiences and set up a budget for your Bing or Google Ads.

As you can probably tell, the organic approach will require more patience and possibly more leg work. Traffic from paid ads certainly doesn’t come easy, but it does show you faster results when done right.

For most brands, deciding on the right balance between the two will come down to the production cost for their content and the budget allocated to paid ads, whether those run in search engine results or on social media platforms.

What Does an SEO Consultant Actually do?

Okay, first things first, let’s define what to expect from an organic SEO service, because there’s at least a few of you out there going: “Woah, woah, wait a minute. I already have a team of full-time employees handling my marketing and website design. What in the flip do I need an SEO consultant for?”

Well, let me tell you. While your internal or third-party marketing staff surely has things handled from a brand image perspective, chances are good that they already have a lot on their plates. In this way, piling on extra responsibilities like analyzing website traffic, search and keyword patterns and establishing positive link building is just, well, a bit too much. And unless they’re really, really on top of their stuff, tasking the marketing team with all that it takes to address those SEO issues can end up looking a bit too messy.

Bringing an organic SEO consultant on board, whether as a full-time internal employee or through an expert third party means you have an individual who’s dedicated to supporting and furthering your marketing efforts through key activities like:
  • Keyword research and analysis: Before you can optimize the pages across your website and create a high-quality blog and other content, you have to understand the words and phrases your audience is using to find your product/service. An organic SEO consultant can perform this analysis for you, in addition to helping you prioritize the verticals and long-tail keywords that will make the most difference for your overall SEO.
  • Mapping: We can’t be more clear about this — the days of simply identifying keywords and then splashing them all over the place are long gone. Now, brands have to be strategic about the places and ways they put their keywords to work, and the best way to do this is through mapping. An expert SEO consultant will support keyword research and analysis with expert mapping to show where and how often keywords should be used to support overall optimization and your company’s current SEO campaigns.
  • SEO from a technical standpoint: Keywords are important, sure, but overall website function and performance play a huge role in SEO as well. A truly expert SEO specialist can help you identify and address technical issues in your website that might be hurting your SEO without you even realizing it. Elements like crawl errors, page redirects, inaccurate website maps, duplicate content and substandard URL structure can all impact SEO.
  • Perform audits: It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of technical details and task lists. An SEO consultant will give those structure by performing regular audits, which can cover anything from your on-site and off-site SEO to keyword research data and social media insights. By pulling all this data into meaningful reports, it’s easy to identify where you’ve lost customers due to broken links, wrong content formats or mismatched messaging. Make sure you and your consultant agree on the issues you’d like the audit to cover, as every specialist will add their own secret sauce and focus on a different balance of technical SEO, content marketing and link building.

7 Characteristics of a Great Organic SEO Specialist

Some SEO agencies have a bad habit of promising the moon yet lack the ability to deliver anything even close to that. For instance, if a consultant makes bold guarantees for first-page rankings , tries to pass the buck when things go wrong or is weirdly mysterious about their methods and strategy, consider these GIANT red flags.

There are, however, a few things that can signal you’ve found an effective SEO consultant. You should look to include these in your considerations during the selection and hiring process:

  1. Extensive Experience
    Granted, this sounds like a bit of a catch-all phrase during an intern interview, but we’ve thought this through. To know your SEO consultant will actually bring you value, you need to know they’ve got experience. The problem is, that can translate into a range of factors, depending on your industry niche and marketing goals. If you’re a brand-new startup entering a geographical market that’s not yet aware of your product category, experience with your product could be less important than knowing how to research market trends and break down new ideas for curious audiences. An established corporation looking to streamline its content strategy might look for different qualities, as their consultant needs to understand their competition and include existing assets in their approach. Whichever measures you need to take, make sure your consultant has walked the walk and can tell you about examples where they’ve performed exactly what you’re trying to achieve.
  2. Intimate Knowledge of Search Algorithm Updates
    Okay, y’all, this is a big one. Highly skilled SEO consultants should have a good foundation of experience, especially related to the comings and goings of current search algorithms and overall SEO trends. We all know that Google’s current algorithm is basically king when it comes to SEO. But, did you know that good ol’ Google changes its algorithms as many as 600 times a year? While many of these changes are minor, they do have an impact on optimization efforts, keyword usage and search rankings. In this way, the best SEO consultants have an in-depth knowledge of current and past algorithm factors and combine this with their own experiences to determine what will work best for clients according to their goals and SEO strategy. After all, an approach that worked successfully for one company won’t necessarily work as well for another business, even if they’re both in the same industry. An expert SEO specialist will take all of these factors — and many, many more — into account to create a unique methodology for each brand.
  3. Critical Thinking
    Think about the day-to-day of your SEO consultant. They’re looking at loads of data, trying to recognize patterns and predict which gear to turn to solve your current problems. Meanwhile, search engines keep throwing algorithm updates at them. When all is said and done, they need to break it down into human speak. After all, you might be unfamiliar with technical SEO or simply hate numbers (we won’t judge). Technical as it may sound, your SEO consultant’s job involves translating creative thinking into technical terms and back. That requires constant learning, risk assessment and project management skills. Ironically, testing your consultant’s critical thinking requires — you guessed it — critical thinking. That’s because you’ve got several ways to identify these qualities, from checking out their portfolio and case studies to assessing their communication skills and handing them problem-solving assignments.
  4. A Keen Understanding and Ownership of Marketing Goals
    A good SEO consultant will work alongside your existing marketing team and will not only look to get a sense of the goals you’re working toward but will take ownership of their responsibilities in getting you there. In this way, your SEO consultant isn’t working on an island — he or she is an integral part of your team and takes action according to the specific goals, objectives and overall SEO vision of your brand. This includes having a deep understanding of the types of traffic that work for your business, the paths visitors are taking through your website and the ways in which these can be optimized through link building, on- and off-page SEO practices.
  5. Strong Communication Skills
    All work and no talk make SEO a dull game. Okay, maybe we’ve taken it a bit too far with that one, but your consultant should be able to clearly explain the analysis they undertake. At each point, they should be able to lay out how different measures fit into their overall SEO recommendations and how those need to be incorporated into your overall marketing strategy. That’s quite a list.Thankfully, this one is easy to test. Just have a chat with your candidates and see if you align with their communication style. Keep in mind this is also about understanding your own preferences. If you don’t like a casual tone or loads of numbered spreadsheets, that can already eliminate certain candidates. Make sure you address it first, though. Often enough, your consultant will be happy to adapt to your preferences. Will there be things that the expert SEO specialist discusses that, say, your CEO may not understand? Sure! However, a good SEO consultant will have the ability to break things down and avoid confusing jargon so that stakeholders can understand the approach the brand is taking. As we noted earlier, an SEO consultant who’s vague or clandestine about their methods isn’t someone you want to partner with. After all, there’s no crystal ball involved in successful SEO, and it’s not a guessing game.
  6. Technical and Programming Abilities
    This is what gets an SEO consultant from “meh” to “wow!” Let’s imagine we’re a search engine. How can we tell if a site owner is behaving or if they’re going rogue? Well, you’ll define technical parameters telling you if they’re transparent about their intentions and care about their site visitors. If you walked by a boarded-up grocery store that had the words “Put money in slot – Pick up groceries on side street” chalked across the entrance, you’d get cautious, wouldn’t you? It’s not much different online, except we send Google ahead to tell us what’s going on, and it has to look at technical parameters like page speed, loading times, server-side redirects or HTML tags. Don’t be a boarded-up store. Make sure your consultant knows how to set up a trustworthy site that search engines will trust.
  7. Passion and Motivation
    Just like a great cook or dancer, your SEO consultant should have passion. That may sound cheesy, but you don’t want anyone on your team who can’t get behind your business and marketing strategies. Your brand could be looking at an uphill battle with lots of technical challenges, or your brand voice could go against everything the competition does because you want to set yourself apart. If your consultant can’t get behind your objectives, they can’t be successful at any of the other tasks we mentioned. Without a keen drive to boost your brand visibility, you likely won’t receive the results you’re capable of. Your consultant will work closely with and support your other marketing stakeholders and further your overall SEO strategy and success. So if the prospect of working with a certain consultant doesn’t spark a little excitement in your team, it’s time to find the SEO specialist who can help light a fire under your marketing and SEO campaign initiatives.

Harness the Power of Organic SEO

Finding the right partner for your SEO needs can feel like solving a riddle in its own right. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that you’re looking for a trustworthy partner who will carry out your message into the world. 

Therefore, you should feel comfortable assessing their technical and communication skills and make sure you get along and share the same values. Doing so will save you time and trouble down the road.

Jessica Wells is a senior writer and editor at Brafton, working remotely from Hawaii. When she's not writing, Jessica enjoys paddle boarding, snorkeling and enjoying the view (and a cocktail) from her beach chair.