July 2017 - NextJSjointviews

How Social Media Can Help SMEs to Acquire New Customers In 2017

Posted on July 28, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Today, Social media presents entrepreneurs with a pool of opportunities to expand their businesses and boost their profitability. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are great platforms for small businesses to expand their businesses by creating conversations with prospective buyers and by serving as a medium for customer care services. Engaging with the customers via social media platforms helps understand their needs better and improve their service delivery.

A quick view on social media platforms:

Facebook: Widely used social media platform all over the world with over 2 billion active users. It helps SMEs both in brand awareness as well as lead generation.

LinkedIn: One of the main factors which SMEs can’t avoid as there is no other platform better than LinkedIn for quality leads.

Twitter: Twitter is slightly different from other social platforms as it’s mostly news based. But still, it has immense power to change the image of your brand if done right.

Instagram: Owned by Facebook and is the fastest growing social media, thanks mainly to its focus on visuals. Best medium to promote your products as there is no better way to showcase your product’s quality than through pictures.

Pinterest: Another social discovery platform that gives importance to visuals. In this, you can portray the complete story behind your product via images.

In recent times, social media has helped both SMEs and multinationals to effectively handle customer relationships.

If you have a reasonable social media presence, let your customers understand that everything is under control.

One of the main areas where small businesses have made good use of social media is in advertising and marketing. Earlier, companies had to use television, newspapers or other conventional platforms to promote their services and products globally. Many people couldn’t afford this as it was an expensive exercise.

Today, with enough effort, anyone can create a good number of Facebook fans, twitter follows or YouTube views. And you can both advertise and market your products and services at minimal costs to a global audience.

SMEs can attract new customers via social media in various ways:

You must know how to engage people on your selected social media platforms. Researchers revealed that people spend their most of the time on social media. Posting image of your products or sharing information about your products and services in a correct way can help you to reach out your targeted audience.

1. Be Flexible: Every strategy may not work for you as situation changes. You may identify that it is time to change your current strategy and try out something new and more interesting than the previous. Don’t stick to a strategy which doesn’t work for you.
Produce Quality Content That Is Genuinely Useful: People usually think many times before purchasing any product. Experts say that people wish to purchase from the one which is quite popular or they have seen many times in their everyday life. So you must be very careful while marketing your products- use images, interesting words and so on…

2. Entertain Your Fans: Always engage your fans or followers with your posts. Keep an eye on what they like and their comments in your posts, you can get to know from their comments if they get bored. You are supposed to be persistent while implementing a plan and in monitoring your results to know whether you’re on a right track which can let you achieve your goals.

3. Social Organic Search: Sharing a post several time is good for organic search as it will make the post reach to a huge audience. Search engines assume that more shares a post has, the more useful and important readers deem it.

4. Follow Branding Guidelines: You must follow the branding guidelines whenever you are promoting your brands. As if you don’t follow those guidelines it may affect your brand negatively.

5. Social Ads: Social ads provide the most flexible content promotion and are proven best to turn visitors into leads and customers. Making use of social media ads can build your brand recognition and double your organic search click-through and conversion rates!

6. By Creating Events: Social media event marketing isn’t too much time consuming and moreover social media can play a huge part in an event promotion. Consider creating a branded area for people to create good images, take photos, etc.

7. By Initiating Group Discussions: As all know, Facebook is one of the largest social networking sites, so creating and participating in Facebook groups is simply beneficial. It will help you to get noticed by others.

8. Leveraging Social Media Influencers: Influencers are really one of the big deal in social media. Leveraging the influencers enables you to access to a huge circle of influence instantly, helping you to build more audience from which you can build a long-term and stable campaign.

To get the best from social media for your small or medium enterprise, you must lay out a plan first. Do you really need to join social networking site? What is the goal? The objective may be for promotional purposes, customer relations, marketing and advertising and sales among others. The goals have to be measurable.

The most important question, however is among the many social networking sites which are fit for your business? To answer this, consider reviewing where most of your customers belong. To stay safe, use more than one, have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account for a start.

Social media tools that no “SME” should be without:

Social media can be the most powerful method of gaining exposure for SME globally as having a social media presence creates a close connection between the brand and its followers. Following are 4 tools which no SME can avoid.

Evernote: A free platform helping users to share their ideas and with this, you can also compile content.

Google Analytics: Provides free and enterprise tools so as to measure online & offline data to gain customer insights.

MailChimp: An online email marketing solution to send email, manage subscribers and track results.

Statusbrew: Allowing users to schedule posts and manage audiences on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.

Social media is an effective and adorable way for SME to attract their target audience all over the world.

If you’re an SME and not on social media, then you’re missing all the fun…

How to Set Up Google AMP on Your WordPress Website

Posted on July 24, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Imagine a situation like this. You need to access some information urgently but your data balance is too low.

The dilemma of the situation is that you do not have any means to recharge your data balance and all you can do now is to use the data that’s left wisely.

After a quick Google search, you clicked on a link which led you to an unknown page. Bad luck strikes again when the page displays a pop-up draining all your data.

That Sucks big time doesn’t it?

But no need to worry as new innovations are gaining their foothold in the world of omnipresent internet.

Lately, Google has officially declared that more than 52% search requests that they get are from mobile devices. Added to that Kissmetrics (Behavioral analytics and engagement platform development company) analysis says that 40% of those users just bounce to other websites if the response time is more than 3 seconds. And moreover, SEO experts have confirmed that latest search updates of Google are giving prominence to mobile friendly websites.

These facts were enough to cement the desperate need for mobile friendly websites.

The arrival of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) was at this crucial juncture of time and has proven to work wonders since then.

What is an AMP? How does it help?

AMP is an open source framework program by Google which helps publishers improve their website’s user experience.

AMP helps publishers develop a skimmed down version of their actual page so that the user will not have to wait for much longer for the access.

Advantage of an AMP powered page is that it there is a strong probability that the website might be showcased in Google Carousel thus increasing the traffic and a swift rise in the ranking.

Have a look at this official video of AMP to get a detailed idea,

How does AMP work?

AMP uses a subset of HTML pages for optimized page rendering. Another indispensable and astounding feature of AMP is that it has an exclusive Javascript.

There are three types of AMP,

AMP HTML: A subset of HTML which has got custom tags and properties. However AMP HTML has got lot of restrictions to keep it minimalistic in terms of size. Those who are exposed to normal HTML language can easily adapt to AMP HTML.
AMP JS: Third party Javascript is not allowed in AMP JS. AMP has their own Java frame work which manages resources as well as asynchronous handling.
AMP CDN: This will help AMP pages get cached automatically in CDN through optimization.

How does AMP make a website accessible in lightning speed?

Focus on the website content: Mostly website takes time to load because of third party applications attached to the website. What AMP does is that it gives primary importance to the content of the website rather than anything else.

Next would be the JAVA part of the website. Instead of loading website’s JAVA elements, AMP loads its own version of it. By doing so obstruction by third party JS can be avoided and the page continues to load with or without the JS script.

However, such limitations can be tackled by iframes which allow third party JS.

Static Layout: AMP instantly loads the lay out first so that all the external images, apps or even iframes gets confined inside the layout of a website. By doing this AMP can pre-determine the exact size and shape of the website even before it’s loaded. In Short AMP does not require any other outside resources to load a website instead of that it requires only one HTML request to lay out the entire document.

Inline, Size-bound CSS: Even though everything works fine and is in the correct order, CSS tend to block the entire rendering page load and has high chance of getting bloated. AMP pages only allow single style sheet and that too inline. As a result a lot of HTTP requests will be removed from the rendering path.

One of the most astounding features of inline CSS is the size itself. The entire script will be of 50KB. Thus, making it easy to load. However, the process also depends on the written CSS quality of the author of the website.

Font Optimization: Font of websites tends to be super large hence optimization of fonts is necessary to decrease the load time. And mostly, AMP requires zero HTTP requests until the font starts downloading. This is only possible due to the synchronous nature of the java script and only inline style sheets are allowed.

Style and Lay out recalculation minimization: The browser has to recalculate and lay out the page upon script change or even an update. Since Amp mediates all render operations it minimizes effort. In short, one or two layout is required before a page is fully loaded.

GPU Accelerated Animations: AMP transfers a lot of image loading work to the GPU of a device rather than CPU. This makes the website run faster on your device.

How to Install AMP in a WordPress Website?

1. Install WordPress AMP plugin: At present there are 2 plugins are commonly used by developers. The most famous one is developed by Automattic and the latter developed by CDN. After installation, you can see the optimized version of your website if you add AMP to the end of the permalink.

For eg: www.ABCDEFG/blopost/amp/

Process

Open the DashBoard
Go to ‘Plugins’
Click ‘Add New’
Type ‘AMP-WP’ in the search box
Chose the desired AMP plugin and click install
After Installation click the ‘Activate Plugin‘ tab
After installation go to ‘Settings’ and choose ‘Permalinks’
Click the ‘Save Changes’ button

2. To Validate the AMP version

Paste the AMP version of URL to the Omnibox, Add ‘#develeopment=1’ to the end of the url and press enter
Press CNTRL+SHIFT+I
Select ‘Console’

If everything works fine a message will appear which says that ‘AMP validation successful’

When a user does a search on a mobile device, Google at first searches for an end tag to find out which websites have the mobile version. So the priority always goes to that website which has AMP tag in their link.

<link rel=”amphtml” href=”http://ABCDEFG.com/2016/01/28/a-new-business-model-for-twitter/amp/” /></head>

3. Customize and configure Your AMP Page: After installing AMP to your WordPress website it will create a layout for your page. However, if you need any addition you can avail the help of plugins to edit the CSS as well as your AMP template of the website. For example, you can install analytics, SEO, Adsense etc. to AMP in accordance with your preference.

AMP since it’s open source also has the feature to edit so that any improvement from developers can be added to it.

4. Fixing the Errors: It is obvious and normal that error will pop up after the installation of AMP. If it happens do not panic as AMP is not at all a stand alone plugin which is meant to resolve any mobile optimization related issue of your website. What AMP does is it simplifies layout of your website in each and every scenario. So if there is any kind of error you need to fix it manually which can be easily traced in through WordPress.

AMP is made by Google and they give prominence to websites which have AMP support if there is a search. Fixing errors is a crucial process as it will ensure that your AMP page gets indexed on Google search and cached on AMP CDN (Content Delivery Network). CDN helps AMP websites when there is a search from third party website for eg. Twitter.

Errors of an AMP page can be found by navigating through,

Login to Google search console > Search Appearance > Accelerated Mobile Pages

Last but not least always check for errors after each and every update.

How does AMP influence on Digital Marketing?

Higher traffic: The purpose behind the birth of AMP was to make websites accessible for all users without any delay. Since AMP pages loads within seconds the bounce rate will be less and happy users are more likely to back again.

Higher Ranking: Google has denied that AMP is not at all a criterion for ranking. However, in Google Carousel results, only AMP pages are showcased. and those who are using AMP version of a website will beg to differ as they have seen ranking improvement considerably.

Increase in Paid Search Results: Users tend to hit back to their search after reading the content. Since, pages load within seconds users will have the tendency to access more pages thus increasing clicks on paid search results.

The flexibility of Open Source: The beauty of open source is that it can be improved in accordance with the need of a user. Analytics, as well as SEO extension can be added to the AMP pages so that insight about a website will be detailed and simple.

22 Top Email Marketing Tools of 2017 [Infographic]

Posted on July 21, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Digital Marketing is indeed one of the best marketing strategies out there. No doubt in that. Among the digital marketing technique that exists email marketing is gaining so much importance and the reason being its flexibility, effectiveness as well as the amount of creativity that can be incorporated into it.

There is a widespread misconception that email marketing is just about creating an attractive email and sending it to many through an automated software. That’s all in the past. Now the tools used for email marketing has become so much sophisticated and guarantees excellent results.

An astounding feature of this new age tools is that they have the ability to predict the outcome of an email or even a social media marketing campaign.

However, those who are planning to get into email marketing might be baffled by an obvious question. “What are the effective tools that are put to use in email marketing?”

Don’t Worry! Have a sneak peek at the infographic illustrating the top marketing tools that are being used by digital marketing experts at present.

Amazon’s messaging app – Anytime, Will it thrive?

Posted on July 17, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

It seems that Amazon has decided to step out of their realm in conquest. According to AFTVnews, the e-commerce giant is about to launch their new chat app with the name Anytime. Even though there’s no official confirmation the news has created a huge buzz on the internet.

Source: AFTVnews

The report also states that Amazon is already conducting an extensive survey to get an idea about the need of their users in order to create a perfect app.

If the news is true the impact of the app would be game changing as it has been specifically said in the news that Anytime might include a section for e-commerce with chat bot assistance to guarantee maximum customer satisfaction.

In short, unlike other chat app’s which focus on Audio, Video, Message, Filter, Sticker, Smiley etc. Amazon Anytime will have vivid applications, different than that of its predecessors.

The strangest part of this news is that a leaked photo is circulating online which has the list of features of Amazon Anytime. People are suspecting its authenticity because of a typo in the text.

Source: AFTVnews

Amazon’s recently introduced messaging and calling feature to their Alexa devices. Making Alexa app a pretty decent chat app. Rumor has it that the success of this feature might the driving force behind Anytime.

Addition to this rumor, Amazon’s enterprise chat app Chime has intrigued many people. They are saying that Anytime might be built upon the skeleton of CHime.

If Anytime happens the biggest hurdle in front of the app would the persuasion tactics they should use so that people will start using it on a daily basis. The fate of Hangout and Allo has to be remembered as they also created similar buzz when they arrived.

Whatsapp became a successful standalone chat app due to its simplicity and its swift response time. Nowadays Telegram is gaining trust among people due to the same reason.

So if Amazon Anytime has any chance of survival they should focus on this basic factors the most.

How Unlimited Web Hosting Works Wonders on SEO [Infographic]

Posted on July 17, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Often stories have come out in the past regarding the pain staking ordeal people have gone through with their web hosting services. However, things have changed now. Since technology is progressing exponentially web hosting services are also in the same path. They have now become reliable, efficient as well as cost-effective.

It is indeed true that not all unlimited web hosting companies are reliable. But the key is to choose the right one.

This infographic representation will give you can idea about how an unlimited web hosting will work on SEO of your website.

Behold!! Facebook Messenger Ads are coming

Posted on July 12, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Facebook with its 2 Billion connection is undoubtedly the undisputed king of social media. Like any other social media website, Facebook’s main income is their Ad revenue. To yield maximum revenue they have successfully managed to plant advertisements in their news feed without causing any annoyance to their users.

Latest news is that Facebook has started placing advertisements on the home screen of Messenger app, creating mixed emotions among the public.

However, those who feel that the advertisement is being crammed up in between their messages can hide it by clicking the right bottom end of the Ad.

When asked about this, Facebook Messenger product head Stan Chudnovsky’s words as per media reports were like this,

“Advertising is not necessarily everything, but it’s definitely how we’re going to be making money right now. “

Talking about mixed reactions, some online portals were seen furious about the whole change. They are saying that Facebook and Google already channel 70% of the ad revenue from all over the world to their pocket. And this new implementation is nothing less than greed.

Rumor has it that Facebook expects a revenue decrease from news feed Ads and this insight is the driving force behind this new implementation.

To cover up the future loss and as an extra income, Facebook is expecting their Messenger Ads will earn them a jaw-dropping $US11 Billion by 2020. (According to Barclays Capital)

Facebook Messenger ad is not something which they have implemented in haste. They have already tested it in Thailand and Australia for 6 months and has the backing of promising results.

Instagram photo-sharing app owned by Facebook was the first one to try this method. They introduced advertisements slow and steady instead of implementing it once and for all.

Regarding the types of Ads, Facebook is planning to place two kinds of Ads in their messenger. Numero uno will be their normal advertisement similar to that of Facebook’s news feed Ad. After a while, they are planning to introduce chat bots as an effective interactive advertisement medium.

Advertisers can use these Ads in two ways: They can drive traffic to their website as well as they can answer queries of their customer via chat bots which might lead to a purchase.

How does Social Media Support Content Marketing?

Posted on July 10, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Content is at the centre of all digital marketing efforts. But how do you ensure that your content reaches your readers once it is ready ?
There are many channels to make sure your content is read by the right audience. Email, SEO, Social media, PR, Paid advertisements and videos are some of them.

Social media is one of the most important platforms to promote your content. According to CMI 93% of B2B marketers list social media as one of the top five content marketing tactics.
Here is the breakdown of social media platforms used by marketers.

Source CMI

Content marketing and social media go hand in hand. Good content has no value without being promoted on social media. And social media marketing will fail without good content strategy.

Social media should always be a part of the overall content marketing strategy. It is important to ask following questions before developing content:

Who are we writing content for? Who is our audience
What social media do they use?
How much time do they spend on each platform?
What are the most popular formats for each platform?

Social media is a way to reach your target audience. It is the vehicle which is fueled by good content. This is how social media can support your content marketing:

1. Reach out to the world

Great content is no good if it does not reach people. Social media is one platform where you can promote your content to reach maximum number of users.

Social media has more than 2 billion users currently. Facebook users alone generate around 3.2 billion likes and comments everyday! It is undoubtedly the best platform to reach to large audiences and engage with them. Sharing your content on social media will help you to get more traffic and higher conversions for your website.

2. Let users do the marketing

The beauty of social media is that the users themselves will market content for you. Content that is relevant and timely will be shared multiple times by users. A positive word about your brand on Facebook is seen by other members and builds trust in your brand.

You can also encourage influencers to share your media. Influencers are users with large following and good engagement on social media platforms.

Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing strategies for 2017 and has been successfully used by big companies like Adidas as well as small start ups.

3. Get Real -time feedback

Social media is also a good way to listen to your audience. Many companies use Facebook platform for customer support, feedback and online community of customers.

It opens up two way communication between your business and its users. You can use this platform to generate new content ideas that your readers want.

You can also create polls in Facebook to know what your readers want to read about.This will keep your content relevant and responsive.

4. Build a loyal community

Social media also allows you to build a loyal online community that is invested in your business. These community members identify with your brand and share a common purpose with your business (which is why they follow you).

You can build a sense of community amongst these users with the right kind of engagement. These are your loyal base of customers who will spread your message in the digital world.

5. Drive traffic

Facebook shares, re-tweets and instagram impressions can get you huge traffic. Social media drives more than 35% of traffic and is the top driver of website referral traffic.

Your shares and posts act as baits to lead to your website and leadpages. Make sure that your blogs and content are socially sharable. You can follow following best practices to maximize the use of social media to drive traffic and conversions.

How to make Social Media work for you

Follow the best practices below to make sure that your social media presence supports your content marketing strategy. Once you get this right a lot of your content marketing and content delivery will be done by your loyal followers automatically.

Choose the right platform

As mentioned above you must ask yourselves what is the purpose of your content and who are you writing for. Once this is clear you must choose which platforms you must be present on. A B2B business must have a presence on LinkedIn and Slideshare while Vine may not be so important.

There is no hard and fast rule however. Figure out your brand personality and your buyer’s behaviors. Different platforms can also be used to portray different sides of your brand personality.

4-1-1 Strategy

This is a strategy recommended by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping. It recommends that out of every 6 pieces of content shared,

-4 should be popular or interesting content by other influencers

-1 piece should be your own and educational

-1 piece should be sales-related

Again, this is not a hard and fast rule and should be tweaked according to your industry. However, the important point here is to share a lot of good content by other influences. This keeps you social and also gets influencers to notice and remember you.

Visual Content

Keep your content visual to get maximum shares on social media. According to Kissmetrics photos get 53% more likes and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts.

Use infographics, videos and compelling pictures to get to your point quickly. Nobody likes to click on lengthy text on social media. Optimize your photos so that they do now appear cropped or odd on social media.

Add social media sharing buttons

Use social media sharing buttons on your blogs and sites. You can also insert tweet text in your blog. Use plug-ins to add these to your site. Ease of sharing will make a big difference to your share number as 51% of users access web on their phones.

Current topics

Use tools like Google Trends and Buzzsumo to find out topics of conversation on social media. Keep your topics relevant and fresh.

You can use industry events, sports tournaments or political elections to spike interests in your posts. Keep your posts focused rather than generalized for most part.

Listen to your audience

Keep a close eye on your social media accounts. Closely monitor the likes, comments and feedback. What are the posts that are doing well?

Which platform drives maximum engagements and why? Learn from your experience and continuously improve your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Social media is where you promote your content. It is an important part of a content marketing process and cannot be separated from it. In fact, introducing your content before your target audience would be difficult without depending social media platforms.

9 Digital Marketing Certifications You Can Get in 2017 [Infographic]

Posted on July 6, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Digital Marketing has evolved into a powerful marketing technique of this new age. The most impressive part about digital marketing is that it does not require much of an investment and the results are amazing. After realizing this immense potential, companies nowadays are hiring more and more experts.

If you are a person who is so much interested in digital marketing the first thing you should do is to get certified by Google, Bing or HubSpot. Most companies prefer digital marketing professionals with certifications as an additional qualification. There are plenty of free certification courses that are now available on the web.

This infographic lists out popular digital marketing certifications that you can acquire in 2017. Let’s see which are they,

A Guide to Hire SEO Specialists

Posted on July 3, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

If you have a business online you probably have SEO as a priority in your digital marketing plan. SEO helps drive organic traffic to your website from search engines by ranking higher on them.

This guide is for you if you are planning to hire an SEO specialist or just want to check whether your current specialist is right fit for you.

We will divide this blog into two parts. In first part we will discuss four steps to hire an SEO specialist and in the second part we will tell you the skills and qualifications you should look for in an SEO specialist.

I. 4 STEPS TO HIRE AN SEO SPECIALIST

1. Know what you want

Following are some questions you must ask yourself before setting out to look for SEO. The whole process will be much easier once you know your goals:

What do you want from your SEO efforts?
What is the business goal? Is it more sales conversions or just brand awareness?
What are your current digital marketing efforts?

Simply ranking higher on Google is not a good SEO goal to have. Ask yourself how ranking higher will lead to more conversions for you.

2. Have an Open Interview

Have an open conversation with your shortlisted candidates. You can find candidates through LinkedIn, hiring consultants or references from business partners/ employees.

Have a two way conversation with the candidate and encourage them to ask you questions. A good SEO candidate should be judged by the questions he or she asks. SEO must fit in with your overall business goals. A skilled SEO must be interested in below information about your business:

What is the purpose of your business and how do you make money?
How much traffic and conversions do you currently get through search engines
Where do you get your maximum sales from currently
Who are your competitors in digital space and what do they do better than you

A specialist who is not interested in understanding your business is likely to deliver poorly.

3. Check Past work and References

Look at the portfolio of the specialist. Has he done work with any company in your industry? Has he worked with a company of similar size and philosophy? Ask for hard numbers to show that the SEO efforts paid off in higher conversions, rankings or traffic.

Also ask for references and make the effort of calling or mailing them to get feedback. You don’t want to risk hiring an SEO specialist who is a terrible fit in your team.

4. Ask for an SEO Audit

Ask the shortlisted candidates to submit a technical and search audit. This will give you an idea of their expertise and scope of work. This audit report may be paid or free. In any case it is a good investment to test the water before hiring the SEO specialist. The report should consist of:

Issues with your site
A Plan to fix the issues

Estimated results and time and money required to achieve them.

II. WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Following are the things that you should look for in an SEO specialist:

Educational Background – There is no strict criteria regarding this. A good SEO can be from any background. However, candidates from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) tend to have an extra edge as they are good with numbers and data.
Personal Traits – A good SEO must be a learner. The rules of the game are changing continuously and someone who is not comfortable unlearning and learning repeatedly will not do well in this field. Besides this he/she must also be a good team player. SEOs are required to work with the web developer, content strategist, marketing, PR and many other departments. Someone who is not a good team player is just not right for this role.

Knowledge of Digital Marketing – As mentioned above SEOs cannot work independent of content, marketing, paid advertising and inbound marketing. SEO is just one part of the digital marketing puzzle. Your SEO specialist must have a clear picture of the overall digital marketing strategy of your company. For this reason you must test whether he has a basic knowledge of content marketing, inbound online sales, marketing and PR. They need not be a master of all these subjects but must know how everything works together.
Specialization – There are different specializations even within SEO. There are various parts to SEO such as onsite SEO, offsite SEO, technical SEO, Local SEO, etc. Try to find what your business needs. For example:

1. If you have a physical brick and mortar shop then you might want someone who is good at local SEO.

2. If you want to build authority in the digital space you might want someone good at off-page SEO or building links

3. If majority of your business comes from mobile and you want to optimize for mobile audience hire a technical SEO.

Knowledge of SEO Tools – SEO specialist must be an expert in Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Keyword Planner and Google Pagespeed tools. These tools give analytics on traffic, keywords targeting, page speed and a lot more information needed to optimize your site. A good SEO must be able to draw insights from this data and develop an actionable plan. Some of the other important tools that SEOs use to do competition analysis, find search terms and analyze traffic metrics are Moz, Ahrefs, Buzzsumo, SEMRush.

Red Flags

Lastly, there are also some practices and false claims you are better off avoiding. Be cautious of anyone who:

Promises you a top rank for a keyword within a month – Google ranking criteria are outside the control of a SEO specialist and no one can promise that you will rank number one on a page. SEO requires a patient approach and continuous monitoring and it may take three months to a year to improve your ranking.
Indulges in Black Hat practices – Black hat SEO practices are unethical practices to rank higher in search engines and are penalized by search engines. These include strategies such as buying links, spamming to get traffic and content automation. Stay away from any practices that do not obey search engine guidelines as this may lead to negative ranking for your site or removing your site all together from search engines.
Is not transparent – Your site is your reputation online. By giving backend access to your site you are entrusting the SEO specialist with your biggest online asset. Make sure the trust is two-way. Your SEO should care about your business and must share all the data and results from time to time. He or she should help your digital marketing team to understand SEO to make sure everyone works towards the goal of optimizing site.