This post is an extension of a previous one I have written that explains the value of an SEO consultant. You do not necessarily need an SEO consultant located in your area to assist with SEO. However, there is an advantage to having an SEO consultant in your local area (Toronto, in this case). They will have a thorough understanding of the geography of the area (city and neighbourhood are heavily used in keyword) and knowledge of the local laws, culture, and shopping behaviours.
Remote meetings are great, but what could be more effective is an on-site meeting where it is easier to work with a larger group, exchange ideas, and solve issues. An SEO consultant located in Toronto or the GTA should be available for on-site meetings.
Areas Where an SEO Consultant Can Help You:
SEO and Content Creation Strategy:
- Keyword research and competition analysis to identify your keywords and map them to the marketing funnel (top of the funnel and bottom of the funnel).
- Based on budget and objectives, decide which group of keywords to target first (bottom of the funnel for low budgets). Then, come up with a list of keywords that an SEO strategy with the allocated budget can produce results within an acceptable timeframe (ideally within 6 months and no more than one year).
- Map the keywords to the website content, identify content gaps, and address content weaknesses.
- Improve and create content for each landing page to achieve a "winning content" status, which means content that is better than the top-ranking pages for the target keywords.
- Optimize on-page factors like title tags, description tags, and H1 tags.
- Install all tools to track KPIs (mainly organic traffic and keyword rankings). Google Search Console and SEMrush are ideal for achieving this.
Technical SEO:
- If you have numerous warnings and errors in Google Search Console or SEMrush and are unsure about their impact on your SEO performance, you may need a technical SEO audit.
- You have a slow website with poor Core Web Vitals scores and need to understand their impact on your website's performance on Google. Additionally, you need to learn how to improve your CWV
- You have a very large website and are unsure if it is fully indexed. You are also uncertain about whether all pages should be open for crawling.
- You are unsure if you are doing enough to keep up with technologies like Schema, voice search, and featured snippets.
Major Website Design or Branding Changes:
- Migrating your website to another CMS or undergoing a redesign? You'll want to mitigate the risk of losing traffic.
- Rebranding and changing the domain, and how to do it without losing organic traffic.
- Suffering form a significant traffic loss as a result of a google update or a new site launch
Investigating Performance Issues:
- Not ranking at the top of Google for a competitive keyword despite having the right SEO strategy.
- Not ranking in the local 3-pack for your top keywords.
- Experiencing tracking issues in Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or Google Search Console.
- You are unsure about your link profile: Is it strong enough? Do you have artificial links that are hindering your ability to rank?
- You have a negative listing in the search results that you want to remove or push to the second page.
Auditing SEO Work or Services:
- You have an in-house marketing team responsible for SEO but not a dedicated SEO specialist, and they need help with strategy or training to achieve your SEO objectives.
- You hired an SEO vendor a long time ago, but the results are not where you want them to be. You need someone to audit their strategy and execution.
Hiring an SEO consultant for the right situation is always a good investment. Most SEO consultants charge on an hourly or project basis, making their services more affordable than those typically sold on a monthly retainer basis.
If you need an SEO consultant located in Toronto, feel free to contact me.