As it relates to digital marketing techniques such as SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, if a website does not appear on the first page of the search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing, it’s a high chance that potential customers will never know you’re in business. The same is true for local businesses such as those based in the Portland, Oregon area. If your company is not properly optimized on a local level, even your potential local clients may not be able to find you.
Weeding Out Poor Performing Consultants
Although there are many individuals and companies claiming to be effective SEO consultants, nowadays, business owners should do the research needed to make sure that the consultants are who they say they are and can do what they claim they can do.
If you’re interested in finding out the best way to determine if a Portland SEO based consultant fits the bill, below are some critical tips on the best way to go about choosing an experienced and effective Portland SEO based consultant. Their services should be conducive and relevant to your business during the year of 2018.
Vetting and Due Diligence
It’s important to make sure that the SEO consultant that you choose for your business is carefully vetted. This should take place after performing a significant amount of due diligence. This will allow you to gather the information you need to confirm whether or not this local Portland consultant is qualified and the right fit for you.
1. Testimonials and Proof of Previous Satisfied Customers
A good SEO consultant should be reputable in the local area that they serve. They should be known for their great work and should have a list of existing customers along with the outcomes of their work. This should include the search engine results before their clients began working with a particular SEO consultant compared to the outcomes after they’ve worked with the SEO consultant.
If necessary, business owners should get references from previous clients and talk to them about their professional experiences with working with the proposed SEO consultant that you are considering bringing onboard for your business.
Any well-known, well-established and reputable SEO consultant will be happy to provide you with references. That way you can contact their previous clients about their SEO outcomes and any major achievements.
2. Look for a Well Written Scope of Work
A good Portland SEO consultant should be willing and able to freely display an outline of the methods they intend to use to improve your search engine rankings. This includes the strategies; the timing and the campaign in general that is used provide you with improvements to your SEO rankings.
Additionally, part of the scope of work should include an initial review of your website to identify areas that are preventing higher search engine rankings. This includes errors on web pages, broken links, poorly written content, overstuffing keywords, the proper use of headings, page titles and tags. The scope of work should be clear and easy to understand.
3. Local and Global Experience
When putting together the scope of work and providing you with references, the consultant should also include both local and global SEO based outcomes. They should have the ability to develop both local and national strategies.
4. Guarantees
Although highly skilled SEO consultant should have a reasonable level of assurance that they can provide to their customers with respect to improving their search engine results as a result of performing SEO services, they should, however, never guarantee that they will have the number one ranking on Google, Yahoo or Bing.
5. Measuring Outcomes and Performances
Highly skilled, well trained and qualified Portland SEO based consultants should have the ability to measure your success and the outcome of your SEO based campaigns. They should be able to gauge the success of the efforts put into the campaign along with the ability to track how much additional traffic your website is receiving as a result of their efforts. These improvements should be displayed in areas such as how your search engine rankings have improved, the increases in the number of backlinks and higher conversions.
6. Working within Industry Best Practices and Webmaster Guidelines
Your SEO consultant should also be aware of and adhere to search engines webmaster guidelines posted by Google and other webmasters industry-based best practices. Some of which prohibit 12 of the common SEO tricks that have been used to bogusly increase the rankings the search engine results outside of the webmaster’s guidelines.
7. 2018 Based SEO Services
In addition to performing typical SEO consulting services, your SEO consultant should also be up-to-date with the latest SEO trends that are most relevant for 2018.
They should also have the ability to incorporate other effective SEO and Internet marketing tools in general into your local Portland-based company. These tools should integrate well enough to be effective on both a local and a global basis, whereby your company is equipped with the latest trends so that you can be all set for 2018.