Types of Web Marketing Consultants

© 2009, Brandon Cornett. All rights reserved.

Are you looking for a web marketing consultant to help you generate more business via the Internet? If so, you should know a little about the different types of consultants in this field. While I can’t cover all of them, I can certainly give you a list of the most common types of web marketing consultants available to you.

1. The SEO Consultant

This person helps you improve your website traffic levels by ranking higher in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.). With so many people using search engines these days, it’s easy to understand why so many small business owners want better rankings. Some SEO consultants provide guidance only, leaving you to do the actual work. While others handle the legwork as well. This is one of the most common types of web marketing consultants you’ll find online. We offer consultations in this area as well.

2. The PPC Consultant

Pay-per-click is a type of Internet marketing where you basically pay for search engine exposure. When you do a Google search, for example, you will see a combination of “natural” results and paid results. The natural rankings are the result of good search engine optimization (see consultant #1 above). The paid search results are the result of sponsored search or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

If you want to reach the top of the search engines in a hurry, PPC is the best option. If you want to use pay-per-click as part of your marketing mix, you should find a web marketing consultant who specializes in this area. You want somebody who knows all about keyword bidding, ad testing, landing pages and the like. Otherwise, you could end up wasting a lot of money with your PPC campaign.

3. The Online PR Consultant

The Internet is a perfect tool for public relations, because it’s so easy to publish news online. A web marketing consultant who specializes in online public relations can help you spread news about your company. These types of consultants will be experts with press release distributions services, blogging, article publishing, and similar tactics.

4. The Business Blogging Consultant

Blogs are a great way to expand your Internet presence. They are easy to set up and even easier to use. A blog can help you increase your search engine traffic, establish your authority within your industry, generate leads and sales, and a lot more. Because of the rising popularity of blogging as a business tool, a number of web marketing consultants have begun to specialize in this area. This is one of the services we offer as well, and you can learn more about it on the business blog consulting page.

5. The General Marketing Consultant

I would use caution when choosing this type of consultant. In my experience, there are very few people know have expertise in all areas of Internet marketing. There are just too many strategies for any one person to know. That’s why we limit our consulting services to a handful of topics.

I once worked for a company that claimed to have this kind of “full-service” web marketing capability, and they had serious knowledge gaps in some areas (such as SEO). My advice is to determine what your web marketing goals are, and then find a consultant who specializes in that particular area.