SEO Assistant | What should You look for When looking for an SEO Assistant?

Tariq
What should I look for when looking for an SEO person?
-guaranteed ranking?
-periodic blog posts?
-???
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what you should look for when looking for an seo assistant

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Pillai
Best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) pros may don't offer any guarantees. _👍🏽5

Tariq ^✍️ » Pillai
thanks! What services should I look for? How do I choose one expert over another?
Pillai » Tariq
you should go for the ones that can get you results. At the end of the day its not about ranking or traffic… it's about how much revenue you can make for long term. So the one you're hiring should work towards your business objectives.
For example, if I'm selling refurbished computers and laptops. I need to educate my visitors why they should purchase refurbished computers and laptops instead of new ones.
So you educate your visitors and convert them to your customers. So, I need to get keywords related to the refurbished item and increase the search traffic and make sure I'm driving through right audience to the site.
So all you got to do is evaluate them and see you provide value for your money. _👍🏽1
Tariq ^✍️ » Pillai
is it possible to calculate Return on Investment (ROI) for SEO if they are also running Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads such as Google and Facebook?
Pillai » Tariq
. Definitely cause you'll be tracking them on Google Analytics for sure and you can definitely see the differences in the source of traffic and how those traffic are performing.
Organic search traffic will come from search engines. So you can actually set goals on the type of actions your audience will take. If you have an e-commerce site than you can also track your sales.

Joshua
Ask to see if they are ranking sites successfully right now.
Most of the time, volume & comp of the keyword phrases (KWP)s should tell you all you need to know. Ranking for "tulip spaghetti" doesn't count.
Have them log into the sites they are ranking or give you reporting if they don't have direct access.
Then you need deliverables, etc and a cursory explanation of why they are important. It should makes sense in one sentence. "We need content so Google thinks we are relevant" or "We need to optimize the onPage to match what Google wants to see." _👍🏽3

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Tammy
Testimonials! References and make sure you call them! _👍🏽1

Joshua
This doesn't always work. They can be faked. And oftentimes the customers have no idea what a person did for them. _👍🏽1
Tammy » Joshua
I would never ever hire any sort of a marketing person that does not have proven testimonials and references. Ever.
Joshua
OK. I'm just saying that they can be faked. One of my customers got taken by a guy a couple months ago who was selling snake oil that everyone he talked to swore by. Unfortunately, the snake oil stopped working in 2018. But none of the references or testimonials knew that.
Tammy » Joshua
They cannot be faked if you call those people.You have to really do your homework otherwise you’re going to get ripped off.
When I share testimonials with potential clients I give them email addresses and phone numbers along with the work that I did for those clients. This is why my closing ratio is almost 99%. _💟1

Tariq ^✍️
What about periodic blog posting? Is that not a thing that your SEO guy should do? I know SEO is largely dependent on fresh content on your site so I thought periodic blog posts would be a must but I haven’t seen anyone mention that.

Martin » Tariq
you need to start with on-page first. Make sure you have all the ducks in a row and upload EAT content to your site. Then you can start looking for link building but you need to be careful to use authority resources. Blog posts that give anyone a chance to place their url in their site aren't any good _👍🏽2
Lieven » Martin
EAT for Google or for humans?
Martin » Lieven
for both Google and people
Lieven » Martin
in my field medical, completely non-sense for humans is first in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP)s because it's EAT for Google only. Silos are mixed up, a bad search system. Its all backlinks and unorphaned even slow structure that beats the SERPs now for 7 years! Lots of very strong pages doesn't rank. _👍🏽1
Martin » Lieven
sounds like there is a lot of need for optimization in your industry, literally a gold mine _👍🏽2
Lieven » Martin
knowing who are doing the search engine optimization (SEO) of big pharma, its catastrophic. They still follow Google webmaster guidelines and let expire Private Blog Network (PBN) domains. Their salary is still inferior and their grade low. The highest salary and grade should be the SEO. He should be next to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). _👍🏽1
Martin » Lieven
you are definitely right. SEO pros (SEOs) play a very important role in the company as they strategize the best ways to grow and expand the business. SEOs are always looking for ways to deposition their competition and land the top position. Some SEOs are now also Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)s and effectively convert the traffic _👍🏽1

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Raza
May it be a very simple criteria, or a very strict one, if you don't know the in's and out's of SEO, or at least the basics, you won't be able to tell if the agency worth it or not.
This is exactly why, there are few, very very few people in the client SEO knows their shit. This is because most clients don't know SEO, and any shit they deliver would make them money, at least for a certain period of time. _👍🏽1
Jordan
Plus I would never hire someone who is only pitching SEO. If they are run for the hills _👍🏽2

Damien
Why do you say that? It’s like saying if you need heart surgery, don’t pick a heart doctor unless they also sort out your facelift too.
Jordan
uhhhh not even close 🙄🙈
SEO is a type of marketing. I would only hire an agency that does both and knows how to do marketing.
SEOs are dumbasses when it comes to marketing.
The only time I would maybe hire just SEO is if I already had a bad ass paid ads and email marketing agency and I wanted to add SEO. Then I would want the SEO talking to my paid ads and email marketing teams.
Lori ^🎓 » Jordan
has a valid point because ultimately as a store owner your best ROI is when all efforts are done in a coordinated manner. When you silo out tasks, different campaigns are not optimized to work together. Plus a good strategist will do "this month" that which offers the most benefit. You can use specialists IF there is a solid and knowledgeable digital strategist at the helm. Given this is a rookie question, I believe it's a reasonable assumption that the OP does not possess that level of experience and knowledge.
As an example of how SEO works with other marketing – and NEEDS to for maximum results – On-site linking and content needs to serve the site visitor by making it easy to find what they are searching for quickly, and answering all their questions. The website itself needs to be designed and merchandised for maximum conversion rate, as well as increasing Average Order Value (AOV) and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Most stores are not optimized well because the overwhelming majority of DIY have no clue how and didn't do their homework in advance. SEO without an optimized site can drive traffic but won't convert well, delivering low to no ROI.
Content – a KEY part of SEO is both articles and product pages. SEO is really designed to be the end result of a well-done page that answers all questions. In turn, a well-designed page converts better. – Cohesive effort!
Email – the content you write for SEO needs to fit into your customer journey funnel, it needs to include a plan to capture emails for those higher up the funnel for remarketing purposes. You want your company in front of the shopper when they are ready to buy.
Social media – social promotion is absolutely a signal so SEO content and social should be planned together.
PPC can support SEO by creating 2 listings on page one. It can also be used to determine which keywords you should optimize for organic, and even help you know which landing pages need to be revised to convert better.
All those BEFORE inbound links.

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Sujon
SEO is combination of several category work. where you need to touch every part for getting ranked but it not guaranteed, continuous process. you should start from your keyword and find out your competitor who is ranked already then need to find out why they are ranked then set the working plan if you wanna get ranked…need proper anchor text ratio before start link building and several method of building link need to cover continuously… _👍🏽1
Jaroslaw
You want someone who doesn’t “just use SEO” but something special that most of these doesn‘t even know exists. Plus the ones with 20 odd years experience still cannot find the knowledgeable bits to rank well. _🤔1
Paulo
Someone who will take the time to understand your business and your target customers so you can pick the right keywords to target and create content that will resonate with your customers.
People will click on your website when they see the Title Tag and Meta Description that offers solutions to their queries. _👍🏽2
Chandler
Agree with Zortzis. Ask to see examples of successes that they were personally responsible for – the closer to your niche the better. Then ask if they have a roadmap to replicate that success for you. _👍🏽1

Zortzis
Right.

Andrei
Something like "what I need to get my books be read as books of Tolstoy". Clear, you´ll must wright books which are at least as books of Tolstoy. Can you imagine such a book, but devoted to your business? That´s it, and, of course, all SEO duties must have completed too. If this was only be a kind of simple task, this group never was to exist.
Chris
They will still get the work from you that you need. Most important, if they do not know and can find out , they will be transparent on this and actually tell you, they can find out quicker than you can and relate that back. As a dev I want my clients to have the abilities and be self sufficient to the state I can actually at one point ask their advice and pool ideas _👍🏽1
Oskar
Someone that acctually talks about tangible results they’ve achieved i.e increased ranking/ traffic and ROI. There is 95% Snake oil in the SEO field as everyone and their Mom Can call themselves a „SEO expert” so be careful. There is no “guaranteed #1 ranking” so be careful of sales bs like that. _👍🏽1
Lori ^🎓
Guaranteed rankings should be an immediate disqualification. No legitimate SEO will make that promise.
First step is a site audit and a good one is not cheap. Then a plan to clean it up. Then discussion of target keywords and inbound and internal link strategies, as well as a plan to send your entire buying funnel. Confused yet? Yes, onsite content is part of it. _👍🏽4

Christina » Lori
exactly…!!! _👍🏽3

Cranky
I've posted on here a couple of times about help with ranking. and I find I just get bombarded with messages with outrages sums and it just puts me off _👍🏽2

Lori ^🎓 » Cranky
Good quality, white hat SEO is expensive because it's labor intensive both in terms of producing high quality content and in research and inbound linking. There's just not a really good way around that because you are almost guaranteed to get burned with the cheap stuff.
We have had to set minimum spends because the results are far too slow if somebody doesn't have enough budget to move the needle. A little bit every month can make a difference but it'll take a long time in most cases.

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