Everyone talks about SEO software that will give you the best search engine placement on Google, Yahoo, and Bing but have you ever thought about it from an SEO consultant point of view? Everyone is probably waiting to hear an answer who is better? In this article I will explain to you some of the advanced SEO techniques that are used by SEO consultants and compare it with SEO software capabilities.

Capabilities:

When it comes to the capabilities of software solution it is limited to software version. The software is developed by developers who develop software as per “development requirement” and the software will not perform tasks outside the development requirement. Hence this will limit this software to restricted functions. You may upgrade the capabilities of the current software by purchasing a newer version however it will still be limited.

When it comes to SEO consultant it depends on number of factors such as experience, research, training and brightness. Also a good SEO consultant is a consultant that researches allot and tries multiple of techniques into the search engine and determine the best practice. Hence this will make SEO consultant superior to SEO software due to unlimited capabilities of the consultant from the research, training and experience. You should ask your self a question who helps in the development of the SEO software. The answer is an SEO consultant instructs the main capabilities of the SEO software during initial stage of software development.

Performance:

This is very clear from the above point and I can guarantee you that an SEO consultant will perform way better than SEO software subject to the amount of time spends in an SEO campaign. I have tried many SEO packages during my initial period of SEO consultancy and it doesn’t matter what you do, you cannot perform better than initial trial, and in many occasions my ranking will drop lower because of competition. One way of doing better is to try other software which may perform slightly better and again the search placement will drop due to competition. This is the stage where you need an SEO consultant to boost your search engine placement higher.

Search Engine Algorithm update:

In many occasions the search engine changes algorithm, which directly affects the ranking results. The SEO software will be incapable to make the essential change because it is programmed and this during:

• Search Engine changes keyword density from 3% to 2%.

This change will make your search engine placement to drop. If the software recommended a 3% keyword density. From my experience this drop will be some thing like 2-4 pages depending on the keyword density used. Simply the software will not be smart enough to detect the change unless you buy a new software version. The SEO consultant can easily analyse the change and reduces the keyword density to 2% which is quicker. SEO consultants can also make a quick action regarding the following changes:

• Search Engine reduces the importance of page title
• Search Engine reduces the importance of meta description
• Search Engine limits the number of incoming links from page A to page B
• Search Engine limits the number of incoming links from site A to site B

In every occasion the software will not be able to think like a human. Therefore your project will suffer form the limitation of software. In conclusion I say nothing will replace a good SEO consultant and I can confirm it to you for example type the keyword “SEO” in Google search box you will see on page 1 of Google the list of many SEO companies who used SEO consultants to optimize their site.

There are many different business consulting tips that can be recollected here. I will be interspersing many different tips for business consulting. The top five will be discussed here. These tips are for finding a business consultant, as there are different tips for different sections when talking about consulting and business. When you are looking to hire a consultant, bear in mind these particular questions and the answers to those questions before hiring someone to consult your business. These questions are not limited to experience, business know how and cost, they also range to interviewing and checking all references and resumes.

The first thing that you need to do is to understand what role the consultant will play in your business. A consultant is there to help your business thrive and to supplement your own knowledge. Another thing to keep in mind is that you need to define the work that will be done, such as business model problems, personnel problems, or other problems relating to your business. You need to know for yourself what results that you want from the consultant. You also need to be able to find a consultant. Using word of mouth or get a list of qualified consultants from the government or to surf the web and find them that way.

When hiring a consultant, you need to stringently check the applicant’s resume and references. Check these references and ask if they were happy or not happy with the consultant’s work and why or why not. This will also help you to weed out the ones that are not beneficial to your business. By getting the answers to the questions labeled above, you will have a clearer picture of the consultant. This is critical if you are going to have this consultant at your place of business. You need someone trustworthy to tell you the things that maybe you don’t want to hear.

The next step is to interview each candidate. Ask them questions about their experience and background. You will need to personally interview each one and get to know them well, before you turn them loose on your business. The next step after interviews is the consultant’s price for helping turn your business around. You need to be able to negotiate price, determine interim payments for plans, and also the final payment for the services rendered.

There are three other considerations when hiring a consultant. Do they carry Omissions and Errors insurance and do they carry Commercial Liability insurance? Bear in mind that this and other considerations are needed in order to make the correct choice in choosing a consultant for your business. These are the top business consulting tips for choosing a consultant for your business.

If your company needs to implement the waste-reduction method known widely as lean, they will have a couple of different choices.  They could hire outside lean consulting professionals, or they could create experts within the organization.  Both of these choices assumes that the company doesn’t already somehow possess the expertise…inexplicably ignoring it.  So let’s take a look at the pros and cons of these two choices in obtaining any sort of lean consulting.

Outside Consultants
The first, and most immediately available option is to call in the cavalry, so to speak.  The benefits here would be how quickly you could get started, the peace-of-mind of knowing you have an expert on-board, and how rapidly you could start taking action.  In turn, the above benefits would prevent you making false-starts in implementation.

So what are the “cons” of paying for outside lean consulting?  First, it tends to be more expensive.  Second, the company is less likely to buy in and own changes in their processes if some outsider (who probably doesn’t know nearly as much about the business) came up with them.  If that second thing happens, then the company is less likely to stick to any changes long-term.  As soon as things look like their “going awry,” the old processes will come right back.

That brings me to the third potential problem with hiring outside lean consultants…lack of “continuity of care.”  Companies need to be vigilant when selecting a consultant, and ensure that they understand the terms of service.  There are a lot of lean consulting firms that will send an expert to you for two weeks to run one “lean event,” after which they leave.  Unless you company already has very strong commitment to and belief in the lean methodology, this method of “buying events” from consultants can encourage a lack of buy-in.  There is more of a feeling that you’re paying a “waste doctor” to come in and perform multiple surgeries of a period of a year or two, which will fix all your problems while you continue to operate under the same mind-set that got you into trouble in the first place.

Internal Lean Experts
The “pros” of seeking to train your own experts inside the company include an increased likelihood of buy-in.  If employees see that the changes are coming from someone who has done what they’ve done…seen what they’ve seen, someone who knows the business, they’ll be more likely to believe in and stick to those changes.  Also, when there is full-time lean expertise within the organization, the cost tends to much lower than paying outside consultants, at least initially.  Plus, management can rely on day-to-day oversight of lean implementation and activity, rather than doing it in 2-week spurts every few months.

But there are disadvantages to building an internal lean team as well.  The biggest draw-back is how long it will take to develop enough expertise in your new experts to make any difference.  The “ramp-up” period is much longer than bringing in outside help.  Next is the additional time it will take the company to “get it right” after several false-starts.  Just like learning any new skill, you will make mistakes at first.  And without an expert coach, you will make more.  And ironically, some of the same buy-in issues that exist in the outside consultant scenario can exist here.

A common scenario plays out like this.  The big boss decides to implement lean internally, so they pick the folks from the workforce who will become the experts.  The organization sets up a team and sends them to a training seminar lasting a few weeks.  Then the big boss goes about business as usual, asking for status reports from the team periodically.  Even if the team has managed to become experts in 2 weeks (not likely), they will still just be employees of the company, and their ideas will simply not carry the weight with management that the same ideas would coming from an outside consultant.  It’s the prophet in your his own country paradox.  It isn’t logical, but it is a powerful part of human nature.  Unless management has strong belief in and support for lean concepts, this approach is not likely to yield positive lasting results either.

So… what?  Am I saying you should neither hire outside an outside consultant, nor try to train up your own expert team?  No…I’m saying you should do both!  By taking advantage of the “pros” of both approaches and cautiously avoiding the cons of both, the odds of success are high.  Did you notice that there was one common factor in each approach that could make the difference between success and failure?  Strong leadership support for and belief in lean concepts and methodology is absolutely essential.  Once you have that, it almost doesn’t matter which method you choose, because you’ll have the support to get you there eventually.

So assuming proper leadership support for lean concepts, make the best use of both options above by hiring the outside consultant at the very start.  Pick your team and have them work side-by-side with the consultant for a few months.  This way you can avoid the drive-by lean event method. During this time, start training everyone in the organization in lean thinking.  Then leadership must start making changes in the measurement and reward structure of the organization to adapt to lean thinking versus traditional thinking.  Now you start you lean events/projects, facilitated by the consultant and members of your lean team.  As employees get used to participating on event teams, and as your internal team gain more expertise and experience, the consultant can spend less and less time on-site, eventually fading away entirely.

As long as that leadership support remains, the above approach to external and internal expertise will have a huge chance of succeeding.

When a Small, medium or big sized business needs a competent search engine optimization (SEO) consultant, there are four options available:

1 – Assemble a team of in-house webmasters, programmers and marketers to do the job.

2 – Contract the job to a specialized SEO company.

3 – Post an advertisement to hire an SEO consultant to work as an employee in the company.

4 – Get an in-house SEO consultant from a specialized company to work with their staff without being an employee.

So, what is the best option for your company? There are many points to consider before taking your decision.

1 – Assembling your in-house team of webmasters and marketers will never work: From my long experience, assembling a team of in-house webmasters, programmers and marketers to do the job will never succeed as none of them has enough experience in optimization. Moreover, they do not realize what are the challenges that they are up against or the hidden problems from which their website is suffering.

2 – Applying the best SEO practices: When starting any online project, the in-house SEO consultant will work with your managers to ensure that the Best SEO Practices are applied to every project, which will make it much faster to get your new web pages and other internet promotional advertisement to the first pages of Google and other major search engines.

3 – SEO training seminars and workshops: An in-house SEO consultant will be able to organize SEO training seminars and workshops for different departments and different levels of employees on how to apply and include the Best SEO Practices in every online project.

4 – Getting more profitable and productive ideas: The daily discussions and the direct communications between an in-house SEO consultant and the company administrators, managers, directors, programmers and webmasters will spark many new ideas on both sides. A simple idea or a suggestion in such an atmosphere can make a huge difference in starting a new campaign or modifying and existing one to be more profitable.

5 – Creating the most SEO friendly websites: An in-house SEO consultant will be able to work more easily with your managers to apply any necessary modifications or redesigns to your websites in order to convert them into the most SEO friendly websites in the shortest possible time and with the least efforts. This will ensure that your websites will rank in the first pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other major search engines in the shortest time.

6 – Detailed SEO audit: working with your webmasters and programmers, an in-house SEO consultant can more easily perform a detailed SEO audit to list all the points that need correction or modification in your website and in your different online advertising campaigns.

7 – Selecting the most effective and profitable keywords to use for optimization: Having a direct contact with your staff in different departments will enable the in-house SEO consultant to finish the process of selecting the most effective and profitable keywords in no time, so the whole process of optimization can start quickly and become more effective and productive.

8 – Adding social media marketing as an integral part of your internet marketing strategies: The in-house SEO consultant will have a direct relationship with a few selected employees in different departments to train them on how to establish a solid presence in different Social Media platforms. Maintaining a healthy presence on different Social Media platforms is a costly and time-consuming process. Having the in-house SEO consultant start and only supervise the selected company employees doing the daily Social Media Marketing activities will significantly reduce the cost involved in the process.

9 – Publishing press releases: Being in direct contact with different levels of administration, it is much easier for an in-house SEO consultant to find dozens of ideas for new press releases every week. He can coordinate and publish many press releases every month to promote the products and services of the company, enhance branding and create hundreds of high quality back links which will post the positions of many keywords to rank in the first pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other major search engines.

10 – Blogging: An in-house Consultant will have better chances to get many blog posts from different departments to post in the company blogs every week. An outside SEO company will not be in a similar position to contact different experts in the company to write blog posts. Every well written and optimized blog post is an asset and a testimony for the company. Blog posts will create hundreds of high quality back links in addition to promoting the products and services of the company.

11 – Saving your time and money wasted on interviewing and hiring: Hiring an experienced SEO consultant is not an easy task. Hours are wasted in evaluating and interviewing many candidates. The interviewers usually do not have enough knowledge to enable them to pick up the most qualified candidates. On the other hand, getting an In-House SEO Consultant from a specialized SEO company will ensure having an experienced consultant without wasting any time in the hiring process.

12 – Full-time or part-time: An In-House SEO Consultant from a specialized company can work one or two days per week, one or two days per month or five days a week. Depending or you needs and the turnover of your online projects, the in-house consultant can work one or two days in one week, five days the next week and one day in the following week. This provides you with flexibility which is not always possible when you hire an employee and save your business a lot of money when there is not much work for an SEO consultant.

In Conclusion:

Hiring a competent SEO consultant is never easy especially if the hiring managers are not proficient enough in SEO to identify and pick the best candidate.

An in-house SEO consultant will work wonders for any business website by establishing clear standards for the Best SEO Practices in all company departments involved in the process of launching, modifying, improving and maintaining the many websites of your company.

Getting an in-house SEO consultant from a specialized SEO company is the most productive and cost-effective option. Many companies have realized the value and the cost savings involved in getting an In-House SEO Consultant. These companies have achieved their goals in getting higher returns on their investments in web optimization and internet marketing.

When small businesses are looking for a support solution for maintaining their network and computer systems, they have several options. They can utilize one of their tech-savvy employees to pull double-duty as their in-house tech. They can employ a dedicated in-house network administrator. Or they can outsource the service to an IT Support company, an MSP or to an Independent Computer Consultant.

In today’s market, I believe that the Independent Computer Consultant represents the best possible support model for serving the needs of the small business customer. And I firmly believe that any computer professional with the skill set to maintain a small business network should strongly consider starting a small business of his or her own.

In the early days of outsourced computer support (and to this day for many consultants), the break/fix support model where services were charged for by the hour was standard practice. We wait for the systems to fail, call the computer consultant to come out and fix it, he sends an invoice. Repeat as necessary.

It’s obvious how this support model puts the needs of the computer consultant directly at odds with the needs of the client.

The client typically sees the computer consultant as an unwanted expense. Should the consultant be required to make an office visit to the customer, it’s likely because something is broken, which is costing the customer money… both in lost productivity and for whatever the repair costs might be. Under the hourly-rate service model, it’s understandable why the customer would want to see the computer consultant as little as possible. Of course, this works directly against the needs of the consultant, who’s simply trying to bill enough hours each day to make a sustainable income.

If the hourly support model is a lose-win proposition (the more pain the client experiences, the more money the computer consultant makes), how can we create a business model where everybody wins? For us to do this, let’s take a look at what each member of the relationship is looking for:

The Computer Consultant Wants:

• To make a consistent, reliable and possibly substantial salary.
• To have a high level of job security.
• To be able to learn, work with and be challenged by new technologies.
• To work with a diverse group of customers and computer systems, keeping the days varied and interesting.
• To work a reasonable amount of hours and enjoy a balanced work and personal life.

The Client Wants:

• They want their systems to perform reliably at all times.
• They want ZERO unexpected downtime.
• They want problems prevented from occurring wherever possible.
• They want an immediate response when a problem does occur.
• They want smaller problems identified early, before they can develop into larger, more costly problems.
• Their computer consultant should be able to address and fix problems remotely, providing instant gratification and minimizing downtime.
• They don’t want any surprisingly large invoices (and a large invoice is ALWAYS a surprise).
• They want up-to-date systems (even if they don’t always appear at first to want to pay for it).
• They want a consultant who has a deep understanding of their systems and their technology needs.
• They want to have confidence in their computer consultant’s talents for maintaining their network, supporting their users and to guide them in making good choices for future growth.

When looking at the list of what the customer wants, it’s clear to see what the consultant needs to provide:

Automated System Monitoring
Minimizes or prevents unexpected downtime
Provides for early problem identification
Can provide Asset Management and Inventory reporting

Help Desk
Allows for immediate communication and response to customer requests
Allows for instant remote computer support for end-users and server systems

Personal Attention
Customers want a dedicated consultant who knows their systems. They don’t want a new, dispatched “repair-man” each time a service request is made.

Low Cost
They’re not necessarily looking for the LOWEST rate available. They do however expect a fair and competitive rate.

The MSP (Managed Service Provider) support model is designed to address the above Customer wants by leveraging today’s available technology to support larger numbers of clients while utilizing fewer internal resources.

The support utilities available today that provide remote monitoring, preventative maintenance and remote computer and server support, has become reliable and affordable to the point where they now provide the means for those computer professionals wanting to start a small business to finally enter the market without the need for massive amounts of start up capital.

These inexpensive utilities now help all IT support providers serve their customers more efficiently and for lower, more predictable fees than was ever possible under the hourly support model.

With support becoming easier and cheaper to provide, many well run and well funded companies are emerging and competing for the Small Business Support market. They’re working to establish brand recognition and looking to dominate the market. As regional and even national companies continue to grow and as the current market leaders in providing small business technology products, such as Microsoft, Dell, CDW, etc. enter the small business IT Support market, it can seem inevitable that the Independent Computer Consultant is headed the way of the dinosaur.

I say absolutely NOT!

There is not a single item required by today’s small business customer that YOU, as an Independent Computer Consultant cannot provide reliably and inexpensively.

YOU can monitor your client’s systems, identifying or preventing potential problems.

YOU can minimize downtime by monitoring for system or service alerts.

YOU can increase their productivity and reduce problems by monitoring their asset inventories and tracking the age and performance levels of your customer’s equipment.

YOU can provide your clients with professional, real-time service reports, asset inventories and network performance reporting.

YOU can provide remote computer support to your customer’s end-users INSTANTLY from ANY location where you have an available Internet connection.

YOU can provide your clients with the reliability they want from a dedicated consultant who is intimately familiar with their network, their end-users and their technology needs.

And you can provide ALL of these items with lower overhead than your larger, corporate competitors, which will result in an easier sales process, greater profitability and fantastic growth opportunities for YOU! Because the tools required for providing the necessary proactive system monitoring and remote computer support have become very low-cost or even free, there are no longer any major barriers preventing a qualified computer professional to start a small business and become his or her own boss and supporting a small, but very profitable client base. By providing remote network monitoring and computer support, the Independent Computer Consultant is able to abandon the very ineffective hourly support model and operate on the much more profitable flat-fee, proactive support model. By charging flat rates for service, the consultant is able to calculate in advance the number of customers that will be required to achieve a desired income level. Once the consultant is able to secure an initial client base, there will no longer be any concern for finding enough billable hours in a month necessary for survival.

And because this proactive model for support is designed to reduce and prevent problems, additional time will be available for a motivated small business computer consultant to go out and acquire even more clients to increase the income level and bolster the security of the business.

By following the correct model of flat-fee, proactive monitoring and remote computer support, there has never been a better time for an Independent Computer Consultant to pursue the goal of starting a small computer consulting business and becoming his or her own boss. It is a worthy and rewarding goal to reach for.