SEO Consultant Or SEO Agency: Which is The Best For Your Business

In order to position your site in the first results of search engines, you decide to delegate this task to an SEO service provider.
But should it be better to choose an SEO consultant or an SEO agency?

Discover my choice, with complete impartiality.

SEO consultant or SEO agency? This is the dilemma.

In order to improve the visibility of your website (showcase or E-commerce) in the natural results of search engines and generate more qualified traffic, you have chosen, rather than doing paid Search via Google Ads (purchase of keywords), to optimize your natural referencing.

For this, you have made the decision to delegate, quite logically, this task, as mysterious as it is time-consuming, to a Search Engine Optimization service provider.

To do so, and in a visibility strategy, you went to search for it on Google by typing, for example, as a query “Google SEO provider” or “Google positioning provider”.

And faced with the plethora of results, you found yourself faced with a dilemma: should you choose an SEO consultant or an SEO agency?

I will, as much as possible, help you choose the right web SEO, and that in all impartiality.

Why choose an SEO agency?

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

Also called “SEO agency”, “web agency”, “web search agency”, “SEO agency”, “SEO consultant agency”, “SEO consulting firm”, “SEO consultation services” or “natural SEO agency”, an SEO agency, because of its structure, most often manages, referencing projects of certain importance (medium and large) and over the long term. Its core target is most often SMEs and large companies.

The advantages of collaborating with an SEO agency

The multiplicity of internal skills will allow an SEO agency to manage your entire project, from the SEO audit to the implementation of recommended recommendations, including the design of a digital strategy.
SEO project management follows a standardized and qualitative work process.
The expensive use of a wide range of professional SEO tools will allow an optimal cross-referencing of data for an exhaustive analysis of your website but also those of your competitors.
The disadvantages of working with an SEO agency
The first contact you will have with an SEO agency will almost always be a salesperson, and you will then be assigned to an account manager.
For the sake of profitability, you will rarely speak to the person who will actually be working on your SEO project, as more often than not, they will be managing other projects at the same time.
For the aforementioned reasons, the prices charged will be high, even very high depending on the reputation of the agency.

Why choose an SEO consultant?

What is an SEO consultant?

Also called “SEO consultant”, “web consultant”, “SEO Freelance consultant”, “SEO expert”, “SEO specialist consultant”, “SEO expert” or “SEO consultant”, the SEO consultant is, by nature, alone and most often manages medium-sized projects (small and medium) and over a short period (short or medium). Its core target is, most often, craftsmen, traders, liberal professions, VSEs, and SMEs.

The benefits of working with an SEO consultant

You will only have one point of contact and one (from the salesperson to the workplace itself).
Due to the time constraint, he will only manage a small list of clients and can, in fact, be 100% focused on your SEO optimization project.
The SEO consultant will be more of a partner for you than a simple organic SEO provider.
He will often be a persuasive force to suggest areas for improvement.
Due to its structure (no professional premises, few fixed charges), the prices charged by a freelance SEO will be affordable to high depending on his reputation.

The disadvantages of working with an SEO consultant

As he is alone, the SEO consultant will not have, after all, logic, an unlimited field of skills, and, in fact, his work will stop, most often, with the recommendation of personalized recommendations and rarely with their implementation.
The expensive price of professional SEO tools often does not allow a freelance SEO consultant to acquire several and the cross-referencing of the data, therefore, will not be optimal.
As there is no official training in the SEO consultant profession, anyone can claim to be an “SEO consultant” and without a guarantee of quality.

Conclusion
You will understand, for your SEO strategy, there are no bad choices among these SEOs. There are advantages to working with an SEO consultant compared to an SEO agency but also disadvantages and vice versa. The best solution, in fact, will only depend on your business needs and budget.

Advice

Whether you choose an SEO agency or an SEO consultant to improve the visibility and positioning of your site’s web pages in the natural search engine results pages (SERP) (ideally on the first page), the main thing is to choose the right SEO.

Indeed, in the field of natural or organic referencing, as in all professions, there are some good ones, even excellent ones (called “natural referencing experts” or “SEO experts” and recognized as such) and others less good, even worse bad.

The offer is so vast and diversified, I would like to draw your attention to three important points that will help you make the right choice in choosing your SEO service provider:

For a guarantee of quality service, choose at least a Google certified SEO service provider, and even better certified Qaseo or Ceseo.
Beware of guarantees of quick results, they often hide the use of SEO techniques, called Black Hat SEO, which do not meet Google’s “recommendations”.
And the violation of these rules will be penalized, in the short or medium term, either by an algorithmic penalty (Google Panda, Google Penguin), or by a manual penalty with the immediate consequence of relegation to the depths of the search engine ranking.
Beware of attractive offers or “low cost” prices, they often hide a poor quality SEO service provided by an unskilled professional and using free or automated tools with more than random relevance.
Quality natural Search Engine Optimization involves time, the use of expensive professional tools, and includes personalized recommendations made by a serious, competent, and certified SEO expert. Good SEO is worth the money, but the return on your investment will only get better.
(according to a survey carried out in 2016 by the Journal du Net, the hourly rate of an SEO consultant varies in the US oR UK between $ 50 and $ 250 per hour).

Important

Do not confuse SEO agency and SEM agency (this also applies to the consultant). SEO (Search Engine Optimization) agencies specialize in optimizing the natural referencing of websites (indexing, research of relevant keywords, internal linking, semantics, backlinks, etc.) and develop an effective SEO strategy, but over the long term.

SEA (Search Engine Advertising) agencies, for their part, opt for a very effective marketing strategy, but in the (very) short term by acquiring qualified traffic through paid referencing (or online advertising) by buying words- keys via Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) or Bing Ads advertising networks.  In practice, the “biggest” SEO agencies are usually multi-card SEO / SEM.
This is a little less the case for SEO consultants.