How To Hire For Search Engine Marketing Services? 7 Questions To Ask

I wish someone had explained to me, in layman’s terms, what does SEO mean? How is SEO done? And how do you hire for SEO?

So that’s what I am doing today. Demystifying the most important considerations that a small business owner needs to have before hiring for SEO or Search Engine Marketing Services. And also, I’m covering a list of must-haves for those savvy entrepreneurs who are confident about developing websites and managing keywords, but don’t have a computer science degree and have no desire to go back to school to learn how to develop Java Codes, data warehousing, data mining, and other advanced digital marketing skills.

… Why? Because … what you don’t know is costing you money. Not everything is DIY! Especially in the SEO world.

Search Engine Marketing SEO vs Social Media Marketing – Which One Has More Impact?

A small business marketing budget tends to be limited — but that’s a good thing! When you don’t have endless cash flow, you need to be more assertive. You’re forced to learn to spend your money where it’s really going to count.

If you’re considering hiring marketing services, or starting to market for your own business, perhaps you are debating between social media marketing or search engine optimization (SEO) services.

A Real-Life Example of How Do We Use Both, Social Media and SEO

Imagine you’re planning a trip to California. You’re not sure about which city to travel to just yet. How would you go about making that decision?

You might search on Google and get some ideas. But you might also check out some pictures, hashtags, locations in particular, etc. And … you might just post in social media the typical post “I’m planning a trip to California and not sure which city is best, San Francisco or San Diego?”

What you just did- searching in different places and seeking advice in different ways- is called “the future buyer’s journey”.

The reality is that you need both SMM and SEO, but the good news is that social media marketing is easier than SEO and you could learn how to do it and save some marketing budget. As long as you have a social media strategy and the time to implement, the skills needed are not as technical as the SEO skills.

So… if you will do social media marketing, why would you still need to hire someone for SEO? Can your SEO wait until you get more budget? The short answer: yes you need to hire someone for SEO and that should not wait.

Prioritizing SMM vs SEO (Which One Goes First?)

Google and social media are both needed, but they will serve a very specific purpose that varies by where they are in their journey, which is why you want to have a big-picture strategy- the overarching approach to reach your goals.

When we develop a visibility strategy for the companies we consult for, social media becomes their main source of referrals and word of mouth marketing.

In general, social media marketing will mostly generate you sales if, and only if, you’re using direct sales tactics. This means:

You post very frequently
You stay in front of your audience
You inspire them
You educate them
You message them
You follow up with them

That’s great, but … it depends on YOU. If you have time to do all the process of social media marketing: planning the content, writing the content, preparing the visuals, scheduling the posts, on top of doing the social selling work, that’s good. But this doesn’t mean that it’s a scalable model.

You might want to leverage someone else’s time. Someone who actually enjoys doing that work so you can do the tasks that a CEO does. If you have time, you might want to learn social media strategies and digital marketing skills that can help you do that work in less time.

Search engine marketing, on the other hand, it’s not all about you directly sending messages to users. While many SEO gurus will say that you need to blog frequently and stay on top of your people, in reality, if your digital assets are in order, your business should be getting traffic and qualified leads as you’re reading this article.

If you’re overwhelmed, tired of running all bases of your business, and you’re looking for help with acquiring customers, SEO is your very next move. This can be even better than hiring a sales rep.

The One Thing That Matters When Hiring For Marketing

At some point, your brand will be in the minds of many people and you’ll get business coming to you. But … until you reach that point, strategic marketing is needed so you can execute a plan that takes you from where you are today to where you want to be, in the shortest time.

If you’re like most of my clients, you prefer visuals! One of my favorite tools to strategize is overarching models. It’s when you take the big-picture approach and see where everything is and visualize where you want it to be.

Overarching Strategies provide a general framework for the plan’s goal-specific strategies and define the scope of what the department must undertake and implement to achieve the plan’s goals. As the term overarching suggests, these strategies impact everything the department undertakes and expects to achieve.

If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan to grow your business, you’ll be at risk of losing money in the long term. This is why… what truly matters is that your marketing resources are strategically connected to your business vision. If not, you might find yourself growing a business on a treadmill. Next year will come and you’ll still be in the same place.

How To Hire For Search Engine Marketing (SEO)

Just like you won’t give yourself a fancy haircut, you’ll take your SEO needs to an SEO expert.

Generally speaking, you should expect a personalized service.

There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all SEO plan. And if there is, from the agency you’re about to hire, please step back.

Number One: Do They Know Your Needs?

Your SEO strategy starts by understanding your current online visibility. If you’re not even on the radar, you’ll need the heavy lifting work so you can get on the map as quickly as possible.

Here’s the tricky part. How can you pick the right talent if you have no idea about what SEO is? Perhaps you’ll search in Upwork or Fiverr for “best SEO” and there’s a good chance you won’t understand what they say they do.

The mandatory question here is: what is your goal? What do you need?

Your brain will play you! You will say “I want sales” which is normal. But the problem is… you can’t go to an SEO guru and tell them “I want sales”. They can’t give you sales and neither can social media marketers. Marketing and sales are two separate departments. This is why even the best e-commerce sites convert at 3%. It’s truly a numbers game.

Your SEO needs will vary, based on your business status and goals.

Make sure to discuss your needs with your SEO specialist beforehand so you can be on the same page and have the right expectations.

Number Two: Ask For Conversions

Remember that search engine optimization (SEO) can be described as strategies and tactics used to ensure that future clients can find you when they are searching online for solutions that you offer. I call SEO “hacking Google love”.

In theory, the higher a website naturally ranks in organic results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. In practice, ranks alone won’t pay your bills.

Your website can have 100,000 monthly users that have no intention to buy from you.

Believe it or not, there are many SEO specialists that only focus in ranks. I hear very often stories where business owners have paid several thousand dollars and can’t see results from the SEO marketing.

Not too many SEO specialists are equipped to be specialized in conversions.

Number Three: Hire A Senior-Level SEO

Hiring a senior-level SEO consultant will bring you higher ROI.

Personally, I prefer to hire experienced professionals who have 1) at least 10 years of experience and 2) industry knowledge. It takes them less time to find the answers I need and I get to execute faster.

Clarify with your SEO specialist what’s their experience and make sure they are experienced in technical SEO. A good question to filter their expertise is: how will you optimize my pages for qualified traffic? And for conversions? Can you show me?

Number Four: Request A Strategy Session

When it comes to SEO, just like social media, you have the marketing – execution and the strategy. Not every SEO specialist is a strategist. They can learn … but you might not want them to learn with your business!

Number Five: Clarify If You’re Getting Local or National SEO

If you’re a local business owner, your SEO needs will be different than if you’re, for example, a national company looking to sell on e-commerce. You’ll need Local Search Engine Marketing.

If you’re a franchise owner, e-commerce business owner, service-based professional, your needs will be different.

You see how this is turning more complex and why, if you don’t know what you truly need, you’ll hire the wrong people? If you can relate, my suggestion is to take 3 steps back and consult with a strategist.

Number Six: Take A Holistic Approach To SEO

Optimizing your brand so that it gets picked when people are searching for the services or products that you offer takes more than just typing keywords.

Factors that impact your SEO success:

Creating and publishing excellent content.
Using keywords and keyword analysis.
Link building to improve the website authority.
Using social media links on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Improving your site’s navigation to provide an excellent user experience.
Using marketing and sales copy that converts.
Your brand’s baseline and brand reputation.

Number Seven: Start With Technical SEO

Ask your SEO specialist which tools will they use. Tools like SEMRush, Screaming Frog, and Google Search Console can help analyze technical SEO, but they won’t fix the technical problems.

I always love sharing my story of how I discovered the truth of SEO a few years ago. I genuinely thought that just writing content and sharing on social media, consistently, was going to help my SEO. While our agency website got from 0 to 15,000 users per month, traffic would go back and forth. After a while, following the plan of “type or die” got me anxious. I took my website for a checkup with a technical SEO expert and this was my reaction:

There’s a good chance you have some of them and you just don’t know. And most tasks will require intermediate or advanced webmaster skills.

Fixing your technical SEO problems can be a rabbit hole. This is why I recommend discussing your brand with a senior-level expert to get certainty of what you truly need.

How Much Does It Cost To Hire SEO Strategy?

Consulting fees for a senior level SEO will go from $150- $350 per hour. But not all your needs will require a senior-level expert which is the beauty of this!

You can get a great robust SEO project done with about $2,500- $5,000.

Why do some SEO agencies offer SEO packages for $300 per month?

There are SEo agencies that offer plans where they monitor your brand for $300 a month and might work in some backlinking. But that’s not what you need the most!

What you need today is a healthy website, full of strategic content, positioned in platforms where people can find you.