“Are SEO Consultants Worth The Cost?”
Q: I’ve been getting emails from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies promising higher Google rankings. Are SEO consultants worth the cost?
A: Some are, some aren’t. Search engine optimization is a legitimate investment. Unfortunately, not all SEO consultants deliver what they promise. You also don’t want to get overly fixated on the promise of higher Google rankings — at the expense of more important measurements such as traffic and conversion rates.
Before you invest in an SEO consultant, you need to ask yourself 3 important questions.
1) What can you do or learn yourself?
You can actually apply a lot of your own rank-boosting SEO with little or no cost. If you have the time, there are many free online resources that you can use to learn about basic website development and SEO.
These websites offer FREE tutorials and tips for beginning website owners:
With a little research and work, you can probably accomplish at least half of what an SEO consultant would do.
Keep in mind that SEO is about making it easier for search engines to find your website and connect it with your target audience.
Because Google is the biggest player in the field, SEO requires that you understand how Google works. Simply put, Google cares about the people using their search engines. Google wants to make sure that search engine users are able to quickly find what they want or need.
For example, a student researching the paper on “mountain lions” should get the pages that provide a lot of information about mountain lions. Homeowner looking to refinance their homes in Nevada should ideally get the pages of lenders who can actually help them.
For health insurance agents, this means making sure that agent websites have the content that their prospects want. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were shopping online for health insurance, what would you want to see?
The bottom line is that if you provide the content your target customers really want, Google will find a way to connect you with them.
2) What are your expectations?
Before you start interviewing prospective SEO consultants, make sure you know what improvements you want the SEO consultant to produce. It helps if you have a basic understanding of SEO, and the SEO links mentioned above can help you understand what they can and can’t do.
SEO takes time. Don’t be surprised if SEO consultants tell you that it will take about three to six months before you notice any changes to your page ranking.
You also need to know where your website currently ranks on the top keywords your prospects are using. I recommend using online tools such as www.rankthis.com or http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php.
By putting in your website’s URL address and your target keywords, you can see where you rank on Google search engine results pages whenever someone types in those keywords. This is basically your benchmark.
You also need to understand that your SEO consultant can only do so much. If you’re an insurance agent serving just one or a handful of states, you’ll have a difficult time competing for higher ranking on general keywords such as “health insurance.” Carriers, GAs and other top producers are already in a tough fight to make sure they have the content and SEO to rank high for those popular, generic keywords. And they have people dedicated to just that one task.
The good news is that there are other keywords that can help drive meaningful traffic to your site. Localized and specific keywords are a great way to rank higher on search engine queries. For example, if you’re located in Denver, CO, and specialize in Medicare Advantage, you may want to target keywords like these:
- Denver health insurance
- Colorado health insurance plans
- Medicare Advantage for Colorado seniors
Finally, you need to run the numbers on how much sales and revenue you’ll make from any additional traffic generated by your SEO consultant.
For example, if you get 1,000 visitors a week and 1% of them turn into leads and 20% of those leads turn into submitted applications, that’s 10 leads and 2 submitted apps each month.
If your SEO consultant promises you a doubling of your website traffic, that will mean 2 additional submitted apps per month. Will the commission checks for those two additional apps justify the SEO consultant’s charge?
3) Are you ready for the traffic?
You may want the traffic, but are you really ready for it?
SEO can improve your page rankings and increase the traffic to your website. But if you don’t take steps to optimize your website so that it converts more visitors into leads, much of the added traffic will be wasted. They’ll come to your website and then go somewhere else to actually buy their health insurance.
SEO is only part of the picture. You still need to make sure that the rest of your website and sales team is ready.
Fortunately, the 7 tips discussed in the newsletter’s feature article will point you in the right direction.
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