With more and more businesses moving to the digital sphere, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has never been more important. Unfortunately, millions of businesses fail to reach their target audience and draw in new clients because they don’t know how to master SEO. This is where an SEO analyst comes into play.
Before we define SEO analyst and discuss the benefits of acquiring one, it’s important to understand exactly how good SEO practices can help your business.
The Benefits of Good Web Marketing and SEO
Nobody said that running a business would be easy. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar shop or an online eCommerce store, it can be difficult to get people in the door (both literally and figuratively). So, if you want to drive traffic to your business website, you need to harness the power of good web marketing and SEO.
What does this mean? It means that you’ve equipped your business with the right SEO marketing tools and strategies to bring in thousands of new clients. In other words, you have to ensure that your business website stands out from the competition via targeted advertisements, a user-friendly design, and valuable content.
You can design a beautiful website and create well-written blog posts every day. It doesn’t mean that you will automatically get lots of traffic. The fact is that you have to implement specific strategies for your business to thrive online. While some SEO strategies are universal (relevant content, fast page load times, etc), many are unique to each business or industry.
Ever wonder why some businesses always appear high in Google search results for certain keywords? It’s not by accident. On the contrary, it’s because they’ve enlisted the help of an SEO analyst.
What is an SEO Analyst?
In short, an SEO analyst (also known as an SEO consultant) evaluates the state of your website and web marketing strategy. Then, they recommend changes that will boost traffic and improve conversion rates. This second point is particularly important.
Most people think that an SEO consultant just sends lots of traffic to your website. First of all, there’s no magic wand to gain traffic. It takes a comprehensive plan enacted over a set period of time. Second, not all traffic is good traffic. You can get millions of hits per month and fail to sell any of your products or services.
An SEO analyst develops a plan to improve your business website from the ground up. You won’t necessarily have to completely reinvent your website. You will just need to make certain changes and use some SEO best practices to get the right people coming to your business.
What Can an SEO Analyst Do For Your Business?
So, now that you have a better understanding of web marketing and SEO, as well as the function of an SEO analyst, it’s time to evaluate precisely how an SEO analyst can help your business. While growing traffic is one of the main benefits, it’s certainly not the only one. Let’s look at what an SEO analyst can really do for your business:
Build Your Brand
Your website and online presence define your business for many people. After all, potential customers and clients make their first impressions based on your website. You don’t want to disappoint them.
When you hire an SEO consultant, you also get someone to evaluate your brand. Perhaps your business logo doesn’t draw the eye or your web design makes it difficult for visitors to quickly understand your brand. In any case, an SEO analyst can show you how to make changes that will ultimately improve the image of your business.
An SEO analyst can also manage your Google Ads or Social Media Ads. This ensures that you’re ads appear in front of the people who are most likely to click through to your website. Targeted advertising ensures that you’re not wasting money on web marketing by showing ads to the wrong people.
Grow Your Organic Traffic
As previously stated, this is one of the main responsibilities of an SEO analyst. They determine how to make your homepage, landing pages, and blog posts appear higher in search engine results. To do this, an SEO analyst will focus on four different aspects of SEO: coding, visibility, marketing, and content.
If a website is poorly constructed (bad links, coding errors, odd layout, etc), it may get punished by Google’s algorithms. An SEO consultant will come in to identify and fix these errors. This applies to both front and back end web development.
Then comes the fun parts: content, marketing, and visibility. Not every business needs to have a blog or targeted ads, but they are both great ways to drive traffic to your website. They also inform potential customers about your industry, services, products, and anything else related to your business. An SEO analyst develops a content plan with on-page SEO and marketing plan with targeted ads to drive more traffic to your business.
Improve Your Conversion Rate
Not all traffic is good traffic. If you own a small auto repair shop in Philadelphia, PA, it won’t do much good to get thousands of visitors from other countries. For this, you need to focus on localized SEO strategies.
Even if you are interested in attracting a global audience, you’ll still want to know you’re getting the right kind of traffic. SEO consultants evaluate your traffic to see where it’s coming from and when it’s converting. This shows you where you’re doing well and where you have room for improvement.
For example, you may have a huge following on social media. However, very few of your visitors from social media turn into conversions. An SEO analyst can tweak your content, ads, and keyword approach to bring in visitors who are looking for what you provide.
Become an Authority in Your Industry
People trust companies like Microsoft and Apple to deliver because they are authorities in their industry. Unfortunately, becoming an authority in your industry or niche doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and a great deal of effort.
First and foremost, you must provide value to your customers. Without providing value, you cannot (and should not) become an authority in your industry. Second, you must convince Google (and other search engines) that you are an authority. In other words, Google has to believe that you know what you’re talking about and can provide value to people.
How can you do this? Building organic traffic through traditional White Hat SEO (i.e. the best SEO practices) is a great start. However, you also need to show that other people, businesses, and websites consider you to be an authority as well. You can do this through a strong backlink profile.
It’s not always easy to get backlinks on your own. You may have to pay for them or send out thousands of requests just to get a handful of websites to link back to your business. Or, to save time and money, you can hire an SEO analyst to get strong backlinks from well-respected sources.
Bottom Line
SEO is a complex and ever-changing part of building your business. Even if you understand the basics of SEO and know how to get decent traffic and conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. An SEO analyst can help you improve your brand, increase your traffic, and ultimately build a much stronger business online.
If you’d like to learn more about hiring an affordable SEO consultant, contact Philadelphia SEO Consulting today!