Are you looking for SaaS SEO consultant , but don’t know where to begin? In this guide, we’ll tell you all you need to know in order to make the right decision.
1. Goals of a SaaS SEO Consultant
SaaS SEO consultant services can be defined by their goals. What are you paying your SEO consultant for? If you run a SaaS company, these are your targets when hiring SEO services:
- An SEO expert will make sure you’re easily found online. There’s no use in having a great website if nobody can reach you. SEO makes prospects find you when researching for similar services on Google and other search engines, increasing your visibility.
- SEO can make a difference in how you stack up to your competitors. If you hire SEO services for your SaaS business, you’ll be ahead of your competition, making it easier for users to discover why they should use your SaaS product.
- In order to stay relevant online, you need to rank for your target keywords. If users use your keywords in a search and you only show up on the second page, it’s as if you weren’t there. After all, 75% of users never go past the first page of SERPs (search engine results pages). It is therefore imperative to make it to first page.
- If you need to update your business strategy, SEO will help you get the analytics that you need in order to make good business decisions. SEO is an essential part of every online marketing strategy.
These goals might shift a bit depending on your business, your target audience, and many other factors. However, the main objectives of each SEO strategy are similar to the ones we mentioned, and they should guide you when evaluating the need for SaaS SEO consultant services.
2. What are the Services of an SEO consultant?
Now that you know the main goals of an SEO consultant, we will go through the main services SEO consultants offer. This is not an exhaustive list, but most activities for an SEO consultant are included in the following areas, that cover almost everything that your SEO expert should offer you.
2.1. SEO Audit
All SEO work begins with an audit. These days, it’s easy to get a basic audit using SEO software, however, those audits are never as comprehensive as the ones an SEO professional can provide.
It is essential to audit your website and understand what needs to be updated, what you are doing right, and how to achieve your goals for your SEO work and strategy. The ideal audit should include the following information:
- Missing tags such as meta description tags, alt-img tags, and title tags.
- A speed audit: is your website loading fast enough for search engines? Does your mobile version load as fast as the desktop version?
- Is your design responsive? Are users able to find the same information on mobile devices?
- Are your headings used correctly according to their hierarchy?
- Is your content optimized? Which keywords are you targeting?
- Is your website safe? Do you have malware on your website? Do you have an SSL certificate in place?
- How high is your bounce rate? Which pages get the most traffic?
All these questions should be answered in your SEO audit. The answers to these questions will guide any further work.
2.2. Competitor Analysis
Another essential task in SEO is to analyze what your competitors are doing. Usually, you can match your strategy to your competition. Which keywords are your competitors targeting? Which websites does your competition get links from?
Competitor analysis not only helps you mirror your competitors in what they’re doing right: it also allows you to explore your competitors’ weaknesses for your own benefit.
SEO experts worth their salt always explore your competitor SEO data in order to evaluate what you should do, what they are doing right, and how you can be even better than them in order to increase your ranking.
Keyword research will also help you understand which keywords you need to target according to the search queries your competition shows up for.
2.3. Custom Strategy
Just like every business has its own needs, your strategy has to fit those needs. This means that an SEO consultant that offers you a cookie-cutter strategy won’t be helpful at all.
A proper, custom SEO strategy, will improve your ROI by increasing visits to your website, decreasing bounce rate, and ultimately, increase your conversion rate – which is where your money is.
The ideal SaaS SEO consultant will offer you a strategy that matches what your SEO audit showed.
2.4. Off-page Optimization
Off-page optimization is all the SEO work that lies outside of your website content. The first main item in off-page SEO is your backlink profile. About backlinks, they are links that come from another website, pointing to yours. They are inbound, opposite to outbound links, that come from your website and point to other websites.
Your backlinks should be natural. We don’t recommend buying links from anyone, as Googlebot (the bot that crawls your website before it is indexed and shows up on results) has become quite apt to distinguish between organic links and bought links.
The way to get organic backlinks is, first and foremost, to produce content that your visitors want to link to. Being active in social media also helps, as brand awareness is essential for your content to rock online.
3. Skills a SaaS SEO consultant should have
When it comes to main skills, there are a few things you should ask the person providing you SaaS SEO consultant services. You can find them below:
- Is your consultant experienced? Experience, even if not specifically on SaaS, does help when it comes to SEO. This is a constantly-evolving field in which you need to be up-to-date at all times.
- Does your consultant have a proven track record of good results with previous clients?
- Is your SEO consultant able to see the big picture? An SEO strategy is usually planned for no less than 12 months. That’s how long it usually takes for your SEO work to be fruitful.
And there you go. This short guide should have made clear what you need to know when hiring SaaS SEO consultant services. Remember, the right professional for you is not always the same that fits another business – and that’s okay. Each business has its needs, and the same applies to SEO.
If you’d like to learn more about how we help B2B SaaS companies grow their MRR through SEO and PPC, contact us online or send us an email today at info@getuplead.com to speak with someone on our team.
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