We are doing more consulting than ever before and we enjoy it Here are some reasons why you need an SEO consultant and what they can do for you.

#1 – You can find out what you are wasting your money on and what you should keep investing in!

Businesses are sold everything under the moon and they take advice from people, seminars and articles. Often advice is wrong or incomplete, but people invest in these ideas anyway. Unfortunately, they often do not know what they are actually investing in and from what we see they do not often receive data explaining why the investment is worth it.

A consultant can look at your online marketing investments and determine what is working for you, what isn’t working and give you advice on how to enhance your investments.

#2  – You can have someone to run ideas by and get solid advice from.

If you run an insurance agency I have to assume that your staff really doesn’t have the time to read daily on SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media etc., so they probably can’t give you solid advice on what you should or should not be doing on a weekly or monthly basis.

A good consultant should be able to break down for you the positives, negatives and potential outcomes of any online marketing venture you are interested in.

#3 – You have back up and truth waiting for you.

Many businesses have a marketing person on staff; some do a good job, some don’t and some just don’t know the web well enough to give you true facts about your web presences, successes and failures.

Even if you have someone on staff it is usually a good idea to take some of your advertising budget and invest in a block of hours each month to have an SEO / Internet Marketing consultant be completely and sometimes painfully honest with you. We see businesses plan these elaborate campaigns and they are so sure the results will be great, but in reality the methods employed didn’t bring the results CEO’s were looking for. Many times businesses are looking for the wrong kinds of results and forget things like traffic, rankings, engagement and conversion.

You need someone to be honest with you, because often employees are afraid to tell you they have failed. FYI, failure isn’t always a bad thing; it is something to learn from.

#4 – You can work with the best consultants from anywhere!

I see businesses using local consultants because they are local. Just because they are local doesn’t mean they are good. I suggest you use the best consultant and your discussions can be done via phone or web meetings. If you are going to pay for consulting please choose the right person and this person should have real knowledge, experience and be focused. It should be evident that they educate themselves daily. You will need to give them complete access to your reports, analytics and online marketing ventures for them to provide you with valid information.

#5 – You can step forward feeling safe and not worrying about your path.

With a real consultant you can feel confident stepping forward in a marketing direction and not worry about wasting your time and money. Sometimes things pay off like you want; sometimes they don’t, but there should be multiple benefits from anything you do so nothing is ever a waste of time or money.

#6 – You have someone that lives off the positive information they provide; someone determined to do right by you.

Consultants make money hourly and monthly and they only make money if they provide information that ends up helping your bottom line. For a consultant’s income to continue they must be clearly focused on the their client’s best interests and this means that you have someone that is totally focused on doing a good job for you.

Melissa Fach – SEO Aware