SEO Consultant

Some childhood games never get old. Hide-and-seek, for instance. Although hiding ceased being fun when you got too big to fit beneath the kitchen sink, there are still plenty of grown-up opportunities for seeking. The Internet, for example, which is chalk-full of hidden websites just waiting to be found.

The online equivalent of “olly olly oxen free” — the kid catchphrase that gives you permission to come out of your hiding place — is search engine optimization, or SEO, which is the process of creating a website that ranks highly in search engine results. SEO Consultants are the equivalent of the seekers, as it’s their job to make sure hidden websites are found.

When a business hires you to be an SEO Consultant, it pays you to make sure its website ranks as highly as possible in search engine results: preferably page one, not page 100. To do that, you study your client’s business, then research search engine terms, trends and traffic. Based on your findings — do people search for “cars” or “automobiles,” for instance — you then recommend relevant keywords and phrases, and instruct your client on the best ways to use them on their website, focusing on headlines and text, for instance, as well as hidden meta data that’s written explicitly for search engines.

Although, as an SEO Consultant, you focus mostly on keyword discovery and implementation, you also collaborate with Web Designers and Copywriters on website design and content. Finally, you advise clients on paid search engine marketing strategies and help them monitor, track and report their search engine performance.