How to hire an SEO specialist

A good SEO (search engine optimisation) specialist helps more of the right people find your website through Google. With useful, well-targeted content on your site, more of those visitors become enquiries and then clients.

If an SEO consultant promises to get you to the number one spot on Google, walk away. Nobody can promise that. Google works hard to stop people gaming its results, and nobody outside Google knows exactly how it ranks pages.

What an SEO specialist can do is make sure nothing on your site holds it back: technical problems you and your visitors never see, but Google does. The results also depend on the quality of your business and your website, and on whether you make the changes they recommend.

A good SEO specialist can improve an existing site, but the best time to bring one in is when you’re planning a new site or a redesign. That way your site is built to be found from the start.

4 tips for choosing an SEO specialist

In most cases it takes four months to a year to make the improvements and start seeing results.

1. Be ready to make the changes they recommend.
2. Interview them, and check they’re interested in your business and understand what you need.
3. Check their business references.
4. Ask for a technical and search audit. (This is normally a paid service.)

What does Google have to say?

According to Google, your SEO specialist should:

1. Recommend and put in place best practices for a search-friendly site.
2. Make sure visitors have a good experience on any device: computer, phone or tablet.
3. Back up their recommendations with Google’s own documentation, for both:
   1. the problem they want to fix, and
   2. how they plan to fix it.

Finally, measure the results. Ask whoever looks after your website to set up a simple report that shows how many people find you through Google search. We recommend Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Looker Studio.