Search Engine Optimization
Businesses that are very early in their stages of search marketing and not entirely “sold” on SEO as a channel seem to gravitate towards short term engagements. “Can we test SEO for a few months?” they’ll say.
Also, companies that perceive SEO as a set of IT and web development focused tactics also tend to see promotion of a web site via search as a one-time set of recommendations.
There are various flaws in the thinking that improving on-page content optimization as a single exercise is going to deliver the ongoing competitive advantage for improving bottom line sales that most companies have in mind when they hire an outside resource.
5 Good Reasons to Hire an SEO Expert
1. Oversight of Implementation:
Most companies do not implement SEO recommendations given to them correctly, or at all.
SEO implementation isn’t just the first pass at content optimization and making the site more search engine friendly. It is an ongoing process of adding new, search engine friendly content, making sure that content stays search engine friendly, promoting and monitoring.
Not implementing SEO recommendations properly can mean the wasted investment in SEO in the first place. Ongoing SEO is a focused expertise that multiple hat wearing webmasters are expected to perform.
With inexperienced people responsible for web site content creation and maintenance come the opportunity for errors like overwriting all the SEO title and meta data recommendations. Unskilled web maintenance, if left unchecked, can undo months or years of previous SEO investment and website development.
2. Link Acquisition
Links drive traffic, they promote brands and search engines recognize links in their various forms as signals in determining the best search results for a given query.
You can never have enough links. A vibrant, relevant and popular web site is in part characterized by the quantity and quality of links pointing to it. With many web sites, this is a chicken/egg situation where there might be useful content being created, but because the site is new, there is limited distribution. If no one is aware of the great content, then there’s no one to link to it. Therefore, active and ongoing promotion of a web site is necessary in the form of link acquisition.
Very few companies persist at any kind of proactive link building (directories, content promotion, profiles, press releases, link bait, social media, etc.) or even bother with creating passive link acquisition efforts (bookmarks, widgets, RSS, etc.)
Ongoing professional site maintenance services provide resources for best practices such as link acquisitions, content promotion, analysis and measurement.
3. Professional Consulting
The search marketing industry moves fast, changes often and can consume an incredible amount of a company’s IT and marketing department’s time.
Many search engine optimization companies will provide upfront consulting; offering keyword research, content optimization, code and/or template optimization, search engine inclusion assistance, paid links, directory submissions and monthly ranking (or similarly automated) reports. To some that might seem like a lot, but it’s just a start. Getting the most out of search engines as a marketing channel is a process, not an event.
Professional SEO consulting includes strategic direction as well as ongoing education for the client with regard to content creation, web site administration, marketing, public relations, business development and even customer service. Providing clients with technical as well as creative expertise are all key components to proper ongoing consulting.
4. Search Analytics
“The devil is in the details”, they say and analytics for search marketing is no different. Many companies still do not actively use analytics information for marketing, and this could simply be attributed to the fact that they do not have a clear understanding of the conversion process.
Monitoring keyword traffic trends, referral trends, time spent on site, visitor interaction with calls to action, conversions and many other metrics provide invaluable insight into a successful search marketing program. Search marketing analytics consultants bring years of “been there, done that” experience to organizations still making sense out of search as a channel.
“Brand” is still one of the leading reasons companies invest in search. The importance of branding brings into play the need to understand how the search experience, from query to conversion, impacts the consumers brand experience.
5. Commitment
It takes a pretty strong commitment by an organization to be able to justify the expense of expertise and time it would take to stay on top of what’s working as well as implementation.
There are only so many conferences you can send your employees to and only so much time in the day to read blogs, forums, newsletters, publications and web sites on top of internal testing and measurement.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to do all SEO in house with the desired long term results, but like any specialized knowledge area, an ongoing relationship with a trusted expert offers clear and distinct quality of work and process advantages over doing everything yourself.
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