In a perfect world, you’d hire an SEO expert as soon as you decide to invest in online marketing and content creation. In other words, SEO would be a day-one hire.
‍
Here’s why: While it’s important to leverage paid ads to meet aggressive growth goals and cut through the noise, putting money behind your marketing without leveraging the free channels available to you is bad business. Paid media has a shelf-life, and SEO typically does not. In fact, your SEO marketing becomes stronger over time.
‍
If an SEO marketer wasn’t a day-one hire for your company, though, there are a few common signs you need an SEO expert now. Or yesterday.

The biggest one? You have someone in-house who’s been managing your website and content with no SEO knowledge or guidance.
‍
If that’s the case, bringing in an SEO expert to assess what they’ve been doing, make recommendations, or even rebuild your SEO strategy from the ground up could drive massive results for your business. SEO experts collaborate well with content marketers, thanks to their unique understanding of ranking factors, local SEO, indexing, internal linking, and the importance of page speed.

Simply put, if you’re spending time and money creating content but you’re not optimizing it correctly for SEO, what’s the point?
‍
Alternatively, if you’ve hired an outside agency and you’re not sure about the results or strategy you’re getting for the hefty price tag you’re paying, hiring an SEO marketing consultant as a strategic partner would be a great next step.

They can work hand in hand with you and your team to develop an SEO strategy that’s in line with your business goals, offerings, and content strategy — without the hefty price tag.