If You Want to Build a House, Hire a Contractor
SEO plays a critical part in your enterprise’s growth. With the constantly expanding amount of data available online, SEO helps users to not only locate, but to navigate your online presence. Search engine optimization is like a lighthouse on the edge of a constantly expanding ocean, guiding your customers’ ships into safe harbor.
So, why should you hire an agency to manage your SEO? Why not simply handle it yourself, and spare the expense?
Why You Should Hire an Agency
“The days of SEO being a game of outsmarting the algorithms are over. Today, content strategy and valuable, sustainable strategies are essential, not just tricks.”
—Adam Audette, Chief Knowledge Officer, RKG (now part of Merkle)
Overall, SEO is relatively simple. The software required is readily obtainable; as office software goes, it’s even relatively affordable. Once you have some highly relevant keywords in hand, several aspects of SEO start to fall into place:
Content Writing
Blogs are your sales team, ads, and resource pages all in one. In fact, in 2016, active blogs can generate 67% more leads for a business. That’s because people are more willing to believe your beliefs and buy your product or service when you provide some value to them. It’s not about clickbait or boring articles- it’s about creating content that your audience genuinely seeks out.
Blogs aren’t just paragraphs of words. A lot of research goes into word count, keyword selection, stock photo selection, and even post scheduling. While a lot of agencies claim to know the best answer, the truth is a lot of it is experimentation and industry-specific. Hiring an agency will ensure your content stays strong, and your tone remains consistent.
Local Citations
You may be familiar with a citation or NAP: your business’s name, address and phone number as listed on other webpages. Typically a citation can be found on various pages online, from online directories to social networks.
So why are they important? They tell Google who you are, and where your business can be found. This is particularly important in niche industries. The more citations you have, the more reputable you are in Google’s eyes, and the more likely your website will be served as a result.
Creating citations takes time. You can’t just expect a couple dozen citations to make a difference, you need to create a lot, and on a regular basis. This takes a lot of patience and work- something only an agency can handle this work.
PPC Advertising
If you want your online ad campaign to be successful, you need the right people. Managing it alone might sound cheaper, but think of all the work involved in finding the right keywords, or targeting the right locations and audiences, and you might actually save money in the long run.
Agencies don’t just set up campaigns, they can help manage them so that you maximize the ad’s efficacy, while minimizing your cost. SEO specialists spend their time researching the audience thoroughly, to adjust targeting, to write effective ad copy, and to design engaging landing pages.
SEO Campaign Management
“It’s a good idea to understand how to work Bing and Google for maximum SEO and ranking benefit.”
—Debra Mastaler, President, Alliance-Link
The individual tasks which add up to a healthy SEO campaign are a lot like the individual bricks in a carefully constructed artisan wall, or the floorboards in a finished hardwood floor, or the shingles in a terra cotta roof. A certain amount of skill and experience goes into each one, but not so much that they can’t be mass-produced.
The difficulty does not lie within the complexity of any one task: most people can lay a brick, and flooring—while physically demanding—isn’t the most complicated of procedures. The difficulty lies in tying together multiple disciplines, and ensuring that each one is performed properly.
Management skill is needed to make sure everything goes according to plan. Such administration requires someone with a degree of familiarity in how each of the involved specialties works, and a demonstrable experience in how they work together.
More About SEO
If you want to remain competitive in today’s business world, you require effective search engine optimization—and someone who understands how it all works to manage it. The following resources offer expert advice on how to hire an agency to fit your needs as a business.
