So you’re ready to invest in SEO – next question is, who’s going to do it for you?
You have three choices – do it yourself, hire an SEO consultant inhouse, or outsource the work.
1. DIY SEO
Doing it yourself can prove difficult if you simply dont have the time to ‘learn’ SEO - the majority of SEO consultants have been in the business for years - and catching up with them may delay your SEO long term!
However it is important to realise that a lot of SEO work is fairly easy to understand and implement, therefore if budgets are tight, ensure you find a SEO consultancy that you can trust to hand over some of the work! (And reduce their fee!)
2. Hire inhouse
Hiring a full time SEO consultant inhouse can prove out of budget for most small businesses, however if you are finding that you’re spending more than around £1,000 a month on SEO work, then hiring inhouse may prove more cost-effective.
3. Outsource SEO
This is the compromise solution really - you don’t have the time/ resource/ expertise to learn it all yourself, and yet you can’t afford a full time SEO employee. Outsourcing your SEO allows you to tap into specialist expertise, without having to pay the full whack for it.
But how do you choose a SEO consultancy?
Whether you pick us or another company, then ensure you remember these key criteria:
Avoid guarantees!
Avoid any SEO consultancy that says it can guarantee you a Number 1 position - noone can do this - Google makes sure of this. It changes its algorithms regularly, and without warning!
If they tell you they can - they are usually referring to buying you PPC ads on the first page (which anyone can do), or will get you to Number 1 for a completely obselete phrase that noone searches for anyway (which is why it’s easy to get Number 1!)
Avoid Black Hat SEO
Stay away from ‘black hat’ SEO consultants. These are SEOs that try to manipulate search engine rankings through SEO techniques that Google consider to be ‘illegal’. Caught doing this, and your site may be removed from the index altogether - can you take that risk?
Stick with an SEO consultancy that will improve your rankings just the way Google wants you too - by having an easy-to-use website, well optimised, with plenty of regular, fresh, useful content for your customers, that other websites will naturally want to link too!
Avoid technobabble!
Don’t listen to SEO consultancies that talk as if SEO was a foreign language – it’s not. Many SEOs do this to scare you, and ensure you don’t understand what they’re doing, so they can charge you any price they like.
If they’re good at SEO, they should be able to explain in a clear, concise way what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it. They should also show you what you can do yourself!
Whatever you do – don’t ignore SEO. Over 80% of internet users start their internet journey at a search engine – so if you want a successful internet business, you need to achieve visibility in those results.
Good luck!
