 If SEO isn't your area of expertise, maybe it's time to consider hiring someone else to do it for you. That's what we're talking about today on The Journey. You could have the most beautiful, relevant website, but if it's not optimized and optimized correctly, then it might as well not even exist. Sam, think about when was the last time you bought something online? Oh, just recently. Exactly. All the time nowadays. And 81% of consumers are looking at research online before ever deciding where they're spending their money. And as they do that research, they're not going to page two. Less than 10% of people actually go beyond the first page on Google when they're looking for some product online. Anything beyond page one is like the unknown. Doesn't exist. Your business needs to have a strong online presence these days. If you can't be found, then it's essentially like your business doesn't exist. So that makes having SEO a necessity as well. And as a business owner, you are busy running your business. And I get it. It's a little complicated to know all the SEO in and outs. So don't worry about it. You can actually find someone else to do it. So how do you know when it's time to hire a SEO company? How do you know when you've hired the right one? And how do you know how much it's going to cost? Yeah. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there who are taking advantage of that lack of knowledge. So you want to make sure you go into this decision really educated. There are three different routes you can take when hiring someone to handle your SEO. First, you can hire an individual SEO consultant. This is like a freelancer who really specializes in SEO. Or two, you can hire an SEO company or agency. This is where they have a standardized process. And typically they work with decent sized businesses who are willing to spend at least a few thousand a month on SEO. Or if you're an established company, you can actually hire someone on staff to actually run your SEO. You can create your own team. Now if you don't have too much expertise around it and know what to look for, get an SEO consultant in-house that can actually build your team for you. Now let's talk about what you should actually look for whenever hiring a consultant or an SEO company. The first thing is, of course, they need to have that skill set of actually knowing SEO. But beyond that, here are a couple of things that you should definitely look for for traits when hiring someone. They have an established process. Now if this SEO consultant doesn't want to tell you what they're doing, and it could be a red flag, or they could be potentially just putting out spam and that's not going to look good for your reputation, or at the end of the day, they could be doing absolutely nothing just collecting checks from you. Again, that's not what you want. The biggest red flag is when someone says they guarantee results or, oh, Google won't catch it. Those are huge areas of concern. Probably run the opposite direction because you're talking to the wrong company. There are two main reasons that you can't predict rankings. First, Google and these search engines can always change. They're always adapting, so there's no way you can predict that. And two, your competition can always change. So if they don't know what your competition's going to do, then they can't anticipate that. There's nothing that they can actually set in stone as far as guaranteed rankings. So the next quality to look for, are they providing monthly reports or progress updates? That is so important because everyone wants that ROI. You want to return on what you're putting into this. My current role, I know we are specific and when we tell our clients, hey, after 90 days, we're going to have a performance kit that we're going to send to you so it tells you where we are right now, what we've done, and so that we can plan for the future. That SEO consultant should have the same kind of game plan for you. Check-ins on a monthly basis, letting you know what has been done and what can we do to actually make things go better in the future. Yeah, things like detailed traffic stats and conversion analytics. Those are going to be really important with helping you see whether or not their SEO efforts are actually paying off. So the next quality, they provide training for your team. Now it's important for you to know that everyone is on the same page. So everyone in your organization can get some training from this SEO consultant. Also, you get to learn more about your SEO consultant in that way. Now I know for me and my roles and account manager, many business owners, they just want to know more about social media. So I give them as much education as they would like. On your end, maybe you want to know more about SEO and your team so that potentially down the line, you might be able to do this on your own. So having that SEO consultant provide that education can be really beneficial for your whole entire organization. They should also provide a list of people who will be working on your website with each role outlined. It's important to know who's actually going to be doing this work and what's their expertise. You want to make sure that you're not hiring a company that's just going to rely on some junior roles to actually handle your account just to save money for them. And just because this person has some time on their hands. So they also have reviews. It's super easy to just get your friend, family members to leave reviews, but these should be credible people that have used the service. They're excited about it. And they left some positive feedback about the service. So make sure to do your due diligence. Make sure you get names, titles, business names of these people who have left these reviews. And if you're still not sure, go the extra mile and look them up on LinkedIn so you can actually find that these are actual people. The last thing to consider is take a look at their website and their SEO experience. Is that something that you would be proud to have? And it's important to know that these people are doing for their own business what they say that they can do for yours. All right. So how do you know when to actually hire someone to handle your SEO? We know it can be a challenge. So we've come up with a couple of questions that you should ask yourself in order to find out if it is the right time. So for the first thing to consider, do you want to use SEO for the long term to generate revenue? If the answer to that question is yes, then partnering with an SEO company can help you generate that ROI over time. The next question to ask yourself is, are you using other digital marketing strategies? I tell my clients this all the time. It does not matter if you're being found, if you're not going to be chosen, you have to make sure that your pages are set up properly. Your website looks great. Consumers are really smart. They're going to do their research. They're not just they're not going to just pick someone because they're at the top of the list. They're going to start comparing businesses side by side. And you have to make sure that your presence looks really great so that you're not just being found, but you're being chosen. So if you're not using digital marketing tools, then SEO may not just be the one and all to be all that you want to have. But on the flip side, if you are using other digital marketing tools, then SEO is a great compliment to add to that, as Alex would say, and make sure that you have a very well-rounded digital footprint. The next point to consider is your current SEO strategy under delivering? Now, if yes, then it could be time to call in the people with the know-how, the SEO company that can take it to the next level. Now, if the answer is no, then keep doing what you're doing. If it's not broke, don't try to fix it. It does take time for your SEO strategy to actually show a return on investment several months, maybe six. So stick with it. Also ask yourself, can you do this yourself? Why pay someone else to do something that you can do? It's your business, save your money where you can. But at the same time, from talent to technology, SEO can definitely be a challenge. So if it's not something you can do yourself, it's totally okay to outsource. So for our last question to ask yourself, do you have the budget? Now, if yes, then go with it. It's a no-brainer. You know all the benefits that we've already spoken about with SEO. Now, if you don't have the budget, you may wanna reconsider, think about some things that you could do in-house to actually maximize what you have on hand. And Sam, that leads us to our next point, which is probably what's been on your mind this whole video. How much is this actually gonna cost? Now, I'm all about getting a bargain, but it's really important to know you get what you pay for. So if you think that you're gonna pay someone 100 to $400 to do your whole SEO strategy, you may wanna rethink that because you will get what you paid for. The typical per hour for an SEO consultant, now it can vary by country, but it can be anywhere from 76 to $200 an hour. Now, by the project base, it could be anywhere from 1500 to $7,500. So you may wanna take all that into account when you're getting your budget together to pay for their SEO services. Exactly. The last thing you wanna do is hire some company that's gonna damage your reputation with not only the search engines, but also users. I mean, once you damage that reputation, it's really hard to come back from, and it can take years. This is something that requires a lot of investment of time and money. So if you try to bargain shop and you get that SEO company that's just gonna be spamming all the time, that's not what you want because like Alex said, you'll be in a situation where your reputation will be damaged. And this isn't something you should start and stop along the way. This is something that requires a lot of commitment and that comes from a reputable and knowledgeable SEO company. SEO is a very important part to your online digital marketing success. Also, if you're gonna partner with an SEO company to take it on, make sure that they're reputable and they're actually gonna be able to do what they say they're gonna do. You just learned everything you need to know about hiring a company to handle your SEO. Be sure to like this video and comment down below. Subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified when we have fresh content coming out. This is The Journey. See you next time.