When it comes to running a search engine optimization campaign we would almost always suggest that you use a professional SEO company if you don’t have a good internet marketing background and decent web design coding skills. Many small business owners end up getting sticker shock and feel that it is best for them to try and run an internet marketing campaign on their own or find a budget solution which generally gets them no results or negatively impacts their online visibility. There are several reasons why we suggest going with a professional company over doing it yourself SEO. Here are a few of the most important ones:
- Time – If you do end up trying to do this yourself one of the first things that you will notice is just how much time a proper SEO campaign can and will consume. There are many aspects of SEO and each of them takes a considerable amount of time to be done correctly. Don’t plan on your SEO campaign to end in a month or a year because it is an on going process that never ends. The moment you stop your SEO campaign you will begin to see your rankings, that you worked so hard to achieve, begin to go down. This can be due to competition or new companies who are ranking because they have newer, more relevant content. We know that as a small business owner you likely are already feeling like there just isn’t enough hours in a day to get your work done. Having an SEO company manage your campaign can save your time and headaches.
- Knowledge – There is a lot to learn when it comes to search engine optimization and the research won’t be as easy as just using Google to learn how to run a SEO campaign. If you don’t run a proper campaign then all the time and effort that you put into trying to rank your website could end up hurting you a lot more than it helps you. You see, there is a lot of information on the web about planning, setting up and running an SEO campaign using techniques that don’t have proven results and in some cases grey hat strategies. What they hey is grey and black hat SEO strategies? These techniques are used by fly by night SEO companies or individuals who are looking for a quick ranking solution without doing it the right way. These tactics may help you shoot up the ranking but once the search engines discover what you are doing (and trust me they will find out) your website will be penalized and make it very difficult to ever get ranked again.
- Tools – A professional SEO company has numerous tools which helps them not only get their clients the best possible results but also help them do daily tasks a lot more efficiently. There are a lot of great free tools out there but in order to run a successful campaign you could end up spending thousands of dollars on these tools and SEO memberships.
- Return On Investment – One of the keys when it comes to whether or not you are going to attempt to run a search engine optimization campaign on your own or if you are going to hire a professional company to help you is return on investment or ROI. The most important thing for a small business should be their ROI. Profit is ultimately what is going to end up putting food on your families table however, the fact is many small business owners concentrate on how much a professional SEO company will charge for their services rather than looking at how much business they will bring them. The likelihood that you will be able to get the same return on investment by doing SEO on your own vs hiring a professional is slim to none.
- Cost – Yes, it is true that you won’t have the extra bill every month for SEO services however, once you add in your time, knowledge, cost of tools and return on investment you will find that it will make more financial sense to go with the professionals.
If you do decide to go ahead and hire a professional company, one thing to note is that you won’t want to just hire the cheapest company out there. Most often than not you will end up getting what you pay for. There are many unethical companies out there that will try to rip you off by making promises they can never deliver. Another example one of their tricks will be to rank you for keywords that get’s no traffic. The reason they do this is because these keyword terms are easy to rank for so they will be able to show you results to keep you happy even though nobody is actually coming to your website. Sooner or later you will realize those keywords are not generating potential customers and you are not increasing your revenues but you may have shelled out 1000’s of dollars by then.
For those of you who still think that it would be best to try and run your own search engine optimization campaign we have some tools that you can use.
- Google Adword Tool – You may not think about signing up if you aren’t going to run an Adword campaign however, this tool makes it all worth it. This tool will benefit you big time when it comes to your keyword research phase. You will be able to search different keyword phrases to see exactly how many people search for that particular keyword each month. Remember to only run searches for exact terms as a broad search may bring back unrealistic numbers which will cause you to run a campaign for irrelevant keywords.
- Google Trends – This tool will allow you to keep tabs on what terms are trending on Google. Keeping an eye on this tool can help you determine if it is time to re evaluate what keywords you are attempting to rank for.
- Google Webmaster Tools – With this tool you will be able to keep track of different errors that you need to fix in order to rank better on the search engines. This tool can be absolutely critical on determining whether you end up being successful or failing. As if this tool doesn’t do enough the second great feature of this tool is that it will give you a snapshot of which keywords you are currently ranking for.
- Google Analytics – I know I know, all of these tools are offered by Google. Well the fact is Google is the number 1 search engine and offers you some great tools which are all free. With Google Analytics you will be able to break down your traffic statistics in order to help you determine the success of your campaign.
- Paid Services & Subscriptions: If you are ok forking out $50-$200/month for professional SEO tools we also recommend you using: SEOMOZ, AHREFS, & BRIGHT LOCAL
There are a lot more tools out there and many of them will end up costing you but if you are planning on running a search engine optimization campaign on your end you will want to consider looking into a few of the more advanced tools even though they aren’t free. Just because you are doing this on your own doesn’t mean that it is free.
The success of your website comes down 2 key factors how many people you can get to your website and the conversion rate of the potential customers who visit your site . At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how many people you get to your website if none of them are converting. At the same time conversion rate is a mute point if nobody is coming to your website. You may have some success if you try to do this yourself but when you sit down and look at all the facts, attempting to run a search engine optimization campaign on your own just simply doesn’t make any sense for most small businesses.
Our motto is that we let you do what you do best. Which is run your business and you let us do what we do best which is building a successful internet marketing campaign for you to build your online visibility and help you generate more traffic and ultimately customers.