There are only so many hours in the day. When you own a business, like a healthcare practice, it can seem like every time one task is completed, two more pop up. Even when you have a trustworthy, dependable team behind you, it’s possible that you’re letting important aspects of your business fall to the wayside. One of these aspects may be your organic search engine optimization, which helps ensure that your practice appears in search results when prospective patients are actively looking for care options online.
Organic SEO is the process of getting your site listed high on relevant search engine results pages, or SERPs, without using paid advertising. It’s a cost-effective way of getting site traffic, conversions and visibility for your practice. But if you’re not sure of how to go about it, turning to an expert, like an organic SEO consultant can make a difference.
An organic SEO consultant can play a key role in your digital marketing success, but hiring a consultant should be an informed decision. You don’t want to just leave the responsibility to the first person you hear about (unless it’s BURG+CO., of course). That’s why we’re here to help you make sure that you’re asking the right questions.
5 key questions to consider asking when hiring an organic SEO consultant
Just like patients research your practice before booking an appointment, you should be sure to do research on possible organic SEO consultants. That means asking the right questions and covering all of your bases before hiring an expert. Here are five questions you should keep in mind:
-
“What experience do you have with organic SEO?”
Even though a person may call themselves an organic SEO consultant or expert, it can be a bit subjective. Some people may refer to their “experience” as using one broad keyword in a social media post that performed well. Others may have years of organic SEO experience but for industries far different from your own.
You want to make sure that a consultant has a thorough understanding of what goes into organic SEO success, from building a backlink network to verifying a Google Business Profile. Even if they’re at the beginning of their career as a consultant, they should still have insight and examples of their past successes to make their case.
-
“What strategies do you use for SEO consulting?”
There are some creative aspects of SEO that allow you to throw ideas to the wall and see what sticks. But for the most part, SEO requires strategies that can be researched, implemented and tracked through analytics. By learning about a consultant’s particular approaches for both your partnership and SEO, you can gain an understanding of how they align with your current and long-term digital marketing goals.
Examples of strategies for SEO consulting that are often effective include:
- Focus on content creation
- Looking at on- and off-page SEO
- Making data-based decisions using analytics
-
“How do you measure SEO success?”
The word “success” can mean something different to everyone. When you’re looking at SEO, you might have a different definition of what it means to succeed with the marketing approach than a consultant does. For example, you might think SEO success results in having a full patient load while a consultant thinks it comes from a massive ROI.
Asking a consultant about how they measure SEO success not only gives you an idea of how they’ll approach your strategy, but also about their character and how they align with your values as a practice.
-
“What tools do you utilize for SEO analysis?”
Analyzing SEO performance on a regular basis ensures that you’re seeing what tweaks need to be made and what should be capitalized on. An organic SEO consultant shouldn’t just report that you’re doing “good” or “not as well as they would have liked.” They should have facts and figures to showcase how the efforts are impacting your practice, such as organic traffic and keyword rankings.
The tools they use are a direct reflection of how much attention they pay to what’s working and what isn’t. Common SEO analysis tools include Semrush and Ahrefs.
-
“How do you stay updated on SEO trends?”
Just like everything else in the digital space, SEO is always changing and evolving. There are trends that will come and go, but they make a difference in how your efforts perform at any given time. An organic SEO consultant should stay up-to-date on trends, not just keep doing what has worked in the past. They should be receiving newsletters, following forums, exploring Google Trends and keeping an eye on the social media of SEO experts.
Want to attract new patients to your website? BURG+CO. has organic SEO consultants that can help
At BURG+CO., our team of organic SEO experts know what it takes to get you ranking as highly as possible on search engine results pages. We’ll answer all of your questions so that you’re confident in our ability to get you the results you’re looking for.
Our team has years of experience in helping healthcare brands improve their digital presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in search engine results and attract more potential patients to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help.
Contact our team today for more information about digital marketing or to schedule a complimentary consultation.
