If you have just set up a web site or a blog, you might be very satisfied with the result, but already know that the job is far from done. You already heard about SEO, and have seen ads proclaiming that a company can get your site ranking on page one of Google within 3 months for less than $200 per month. Do not jump at this opportunity until you have done some research and looked at the alternatives, as professionals in the SEO field such as PRable, who offer transparent and time-tested solutions.
The digital marketing funnel has profitable tips for your online business, and can build up your website’s traffic.
You might be asking “why can’t I just take care of SEO myself?” Well, that’s exactly what we’ll explore in this article. Let’s run down what SEO is, what can you do, and why it might be beneficial to hire a trusted company to help you out.
What is SEO?
If you are new to website creation, you will probably be aware of Search Engine Optimization but maybe don’t understand the importance of it in relation to your site?
SEO is what brings people to your website without having to advertise. It is essentially how Google and other search engines view your site and if you want to rank high, you need to optimize your site and content.
When you type a few words into Google and press enter, within milliseconds tens of thousands of possible matches to what you are looking for pop up. Through SEO, when somebody searches for keywords that match the service you are providing or the product you are selling, you want your site to pop up as high as possible on the list after the sponsored ads and big corporations. That is why SEO is important to any business with an internet presence.
There are tons of aspects that play into optimizing your site’s SEO. From making sure it’s as fast as possible, to how mobile-friendly your site is, to how you use your keywords and if the content you’re posting is useful and meets the search intent.
Pros and Cons of Hiring an Agency
Let’s run down some basic pros and cons to putting you on the right track:
Pros
● An SEO agency like PRable will allow you to spend time on your project’s other key areas. This can be anything from improving your site to writing content for your blog.
● You have higher chances of receiving traffic that will convert – it’s in a good SEO agency’s interest to make sure you’re satisfied with their service.
● Hiring professionals will help you build a solid foundation for your business.
Cons
● A reliable SEO agency will be expensive. There’s no way going around it – if you want expert services, you’ll have to pay accordingly.
● It will take time. Seeing results, even if your site is in the hands of pros, will take a while. You’ll need to arm yourself with patience.
● It’s hard to find a good agency. With the abundance of service providers out there, you’ll need to do a lot of research. Picking the wrong option that uses black hat SEO tactics might get your site penalized.
Should You Hire an SEO Agency?
This largely depends on how much time you have available and your budget. Hiring somebody to optimize your site is not cheap, but then neither is advertising. To get the best results you need to really work at SEO and if that is not your area of expertise, then the cost of your time in learning about keyword placement and meta tags, not to mention permalinks and backlinks, will need to be factored in.
It could take 3 or 4 months of hard slog just to start getting your site noticed, and while you are doing this, you are not doing what you set out to do—to provide a service or sell products.
You are not alone in this, however. There are plenty of tools and tons of free advice out there, but you need to be selective. It is very easy to find yourself spending hours on webinars that tell you absolutely nothing you didn’t already know and sell you everything you don’t need. Beware the “bonus offers”, the giveaways at the end that they say are worth hundreds of dollars when in fact they are worth nothing.
The Search Engine Journal is a good source for advice on free SEO tools. Only select the tools that will help you get things started—don’t get bogged down with gimmicks that will do things you don’t need at this time.
How to Choose an SEO Agent
Generally, you should avoid offers that look like they may be scams. Whilst the people may have the technical ability, this might not be their main occupation or priority. Why should that matter? Well, when you are writing content and meta descriptions that include keywords, you want this to be done in a natural way. Simply writing keywords with no sentence structure is bad in terms of SEO and could see your site penalized by the search engines. Basically, you have to make sure you’re getting an actual expert.
Furthermore, because of the intense competition in this field now, they will offer their services at a very low cost—$100 to $150 per month—and this will be reflected in the quality of the websites where they place ads and backlinks. One of the factors in SEO is authority, and if you are getting links from obscure or unknown sites, this will not look good to search engines and could, in fact, do a lot of harm.
Do your research, check the agency’s portfolio, conduct interviews, and you should be able to find a service provider that will definitely be worth your hard-earned cash.
What Happens Next?
SEO doesn’t stop there. Once you have that presence online and you are attracting traffic to your site, you will need to increase conversions, and you do that by establishing yourself as a brand leader or an expert in your particular field. If you can do that on your own AND provide a service, great, but if not you need to hire an expert to help out and at least get you headed in the right direction.
Once the initial work is done by an agency, you can take over, start working on maintaining your site’s reputation and do much more. Hope this article puts you on the right track for finding a solution for your project. Good luck.
