What is the best way to find an expert SEO consultant? (Not a company).

Hello! This is a great question, my name is Humberto Valle, I'm a content and marketing strategist for www.Unthink.me. Our small agency bring big business tools to small growing companies. Your question is related to SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. The reason why you don't see your company name or website pages come up on a Google search is because your website is most likely very new and Google has not indexed it. With that said, even if your site is older and you have many pages and good SEO, its never a good idea to search for your company or website off your own browser like you would search other things because you are going to get skewed results on the Google Search. One of the things you can do to test how you rank without altering the results from searching on your own IP address is by opening a Google Incognito window or going to third party tools to test your SEO. Now, your question was how to get Google to show your site and the answer is simple, you have to index it. 1) Try submitting your website here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?continue=/addurl&pli=1 2) Register your business with the over 80 different major indexing sites out there such as Yelp, Yellow pages, white pages, bing, apple, etc. The more you register the most links Google will have to find your website as it's scanning others. If they all have the exact same information then over some time Google will begin to associate your website page with those particular keywords based on the region that you serve based on how Google categorizes your particular industry. For example, a software development company will have different region categorization and SEO than a local pizzeria. 3) Insert the right tags and code snippets on your website so that Google can best validate and read your website, then index it better. Google does not see or care how your website looks to other humans, can't see what a picture looks like so you have to tell it, same thing with phone number or address on a certain page or certain of a website, just because you wrote it and maybe have it linking to a map it doesn't mean Google knows is an address, but properly tagging the code of the site will help google know what each part of the site is and what's it for and the hierarchy of each page and each section. 4) Improve/create content for your website, when people visit your website and they leave within the first few seconds or minutes is BAD. Really bad. Imagine if someone was ranking stores in a mall based on how many people walked in and immediately walked out because they didn't see anything of interest in that store and left right away. That's what Google is doing, but the more people spend time on your site, the more Google rewards you because they are in the business of giving us good search results - they show relevant websites that are being browsed around by new visitors and returning visitors. 5) Improve/create your funnel system, goes hand in hand with the time spent on the site. The more pages a new visitor clicks through the better for your ranking. 6) Make good use of H1, H2, H3, etc throughout your page and your blog posts. 7) Make sure each page has its appropriate meta data and social media descriptions clearly describing the page content intent. 8) Leverage social media, although no business should really be in all social media you should definitely secure each profile and stick to those with a follow syntax. Facebook and instagram for example are no follow which means all your content there will not be indexed by Google, but sites like Twitter, Linkedin, Google Plus and Youtube are follow. 9) Consider registering for a paid membership with BBB, Google and BBB partnered to provide better ranking to its members. This is easier to achieve in certain cities where you may not be competing against many other SEO savvy companies. But for example, in a city like El Paso Texas - companies with a BBB registrations tend to rank better than others with average SEO (all else being equal). 10) DO ALL THIS WHILE KEEPING CONSISTENT WITH ONLY A HANDFUL OF POTENTIALLY PROFITING SEO KEYWORDS OR LONG TAIL WORDS (SEARCH SENTENCES). No body can rank high for everything, but you can rank high for certain keywords. Some agencies like ours use some expensive tools to find out the best keywords and SEO plans companies are implementing and could help you find the right keywords for your market. Either way, even if you were to pick keywords are random on your own - stick to no more than 5 and make sure to alternate them on your posts, pages, headline titles, meta data, etc. The more you have the more you will rank for those keywords or longtails. SEO and appearing on Google results is a constantly evolving game of chasing the cat's tail. Google keeps improving and changing their algorithm to protect themselves and stay with the times which is why is always recommended that you avoid paying to those click farm, link building services that 'guarantee' 1st page ranking in a month or two because all they do is spam the internet with fake profiles everywhere with your link included, they work for a bit but then they don't forcing you to keep paying for such service and when you stop paying it all goes away VS the way I just described above - well, that investment stays for ever building on itself. SEO is not optional if you are planning on ever depending even a little on online sales you need to have SEO. Its like opening a business in a very busy street but thinking a sign with states your product and "open" is optional. How are people supposed to know you're there and stumble onto your products even by accident much less intentionally? I hope I was helpful and provided you with enough good clarity to help you take the next steps in your business. If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. If you are interested in SEO services, we offer a broad range of services and can accommodate most budgets. Continue learning about DIY SEO on our blog at http://blog.unthink.me/100-incredibly-easy-ways-to-have-better-seo

Great question, To get traffic from SEO it must be done diligently. And the best way to do that is from a well structured article. The key things to remember that will help your pages rank well: Keyword Headings Put your most important keywords here. They must be coherent, simple yet descriptive. If your blog allows you to insert H1 headings into your article, do so. Don't cram too much info into keywords though, Search engines are smart and recognize when someone is spamming. Maybe do a bit of research using 'Google Keyword Tool' In Google Adwords and see if your keywords are popular search terms. Links and Back links Include links to relevant info when you can, the more credible sources your website links to, the better appeal it has to search engines. Also include back links. Back links are links to a location somewhere that also features a link going directly back to your site, these also give your article good standing. Duplicate Content Try not to say anything twice, and if you do use different terminology. But the main focus here is to always write fresh content. If the content of your article has been written word for word somewhere else first how can yours possibly be more credible? Also write often, the more frequent you post articles, the more frequently your site will be "crawled" by bots. If you do this well your listing can only rise. Be Unique and have the Best Info This entails just doing what you do and doing it well. It might be difficult to compete with other websites if the topic your discussing is already covered in great detail. The best position to be in is one of having information that everyone wants but cannot find anywhere else. A good tip for this is finding a specific niche that suits you well to draw in traffic to your general topic. Hope this helps you get started. For an in depth look at SEO rankings, take a look at the 'Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors' http://searchengineland.com/seotable

Hi, Your site is a Q&A so I presume that every time someone create a new Question it will generate a unique URL for that. Indepentend if you have or not an answer you want Google to crawl and index your site as quick as possible to start to analyzing the new page and bring traffic to it. The best way to expedite this "re-crawling" is to use a ping service that you can trigger after your user answer the question. PS: If you site is updated frequently you shouldn't have a problem with crawling, because Google usually identify this type of website really quick. Drop me a call is free for this week. Best,

The cost of SEO depends a great deal on three things: 1) The specific services being offered (SEO, social media, content strategy, etc.) 2) The degree in which those services will be implemented (how many hours per month) 3) the skill and experience level of the SEOs involved. $800/month is a pretty small investment if you consider all the layers to making a web marketing campaign successful. My company will usually not touch any fully-managed web marketing campaign for less than $1500/month and that's at the low end of the aggressiveness meter even for a pretty basic site. A larger ecommerce site might start around $5K and go up from there. Overall, you want to look for value and results. You'll want to know how long the SEO has been in business and when looking at proposals you need to understand the amount of time the company will be investing in the campaign. You also want to spell out your goals and establish the expectations on how/when those goals will be achieved. When the SEO and client don't have the same expectations, that can lead to issues later on. But if you know what the goals are you can both be on the same page from the start.

Are you already submitting your content to social bookmarking sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon? Those sites are great for gaining early traction. As soon as possible, start making a serious effort to convert visitors to subscribers so that you can rely less on social bookmarking sites. Make a list of the 20 most influential writers in the space and reach out to them. At the very least, they might share one of your posts. They might even agree to trading guest posts. Write posts that maximize outreach potential. The more people you can tell about your content authentically (e.g. "I mentioned you in my latest post."), the more pageviews you'll see.