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Hire an SEO Firm or "Cook" for Yourself?

BY: Danae Cowart
Words: 1095

Chances are, you went out to eat sometime in the last few weeks. Why?

Perhaps you don't like to cook. Perhaps you like having food brought to you while you relax. Perhaps you were in a hurry. Perhaps your cooking skills are limited to heating a frozen dinner in the microwave. Perhaps you've found a place where you really like the food. Whatever your reason, you chose to pay for a professional to do something you could probably, with some effort, do yourself--prepare and serve you a meal.

In my work with search engine optimization (SEO), I've heard several people say, directly and indirectly, that it's basically a waste of money to hire someone to do SEO for your website, because "anyone can do it." Let's look at that idea for a few minutes. Here are some reasons why, just as you would choose to eat at a restaurant, you would choose to turn SEO over to a professional.

1. "Anyone" can't do it.
As I mentioned earlier, many people's cooking skills are limited. Marcia's greatest culinary accomplishments may be boiling an egg and making macaroni and cheese out of a box. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. But if she wanted to impress a potential client or business colleague with a nice dinner, she wouldn't put herself in charge of meal preparation.

The same goes for SEO. If you know something about keywords, and what a "title tag" is, and that having links between your website and other sites is useful, that's great, but that knowledge doesn't put you on par with a professional, any more than boiling an egg makes Marcia a chef.

SEO professionals spend lots of time learning and testing strategies to improve a website's visibility. Not tricks like invisible keyword stuffing (which will get a site banned from search engines), but real stuff like:

• how visitors use a website
• what pages are popular and why
• what searchers are looking for
• what search engines are looking for
• whether using new technologies helps or hurts or does nothing
• whether version A or version B of a page brings in more visitors
• how to allocate money in a pay-per-click campaign (where the numbers and competition are always changing)

and so on. It isn't a "just add water" deal. Real search engine optimization involves lots of testing and analysis and monitoring, and being able to understand both numbers and people. You could probably learn how to do it, if you were willing to put in the time and effort. You could also spend two years in college and learn to be a professional chef. But do you really want to?

2. An SEO firm can get better and faster results than you can.
They have already tested and chosen powerful tools for analyzing your website's performance. They already know all the methods to improving search engine rankings--the ones to use and the ones to avoid. They may even know which methods work best for your particular industry. And the faster they can optimize your website, the faster you'll see increased profits. After all, a website is a marketing tool. A good SEO firm knows how to make it perform.

3. Focus on what you do best, and let others do the rest. Can you imagine every individual trying to provide for themselves the product or service that you provide? There is a reason why businesses exist. Humans learned long ago that things go better when people specialize and trade services with one another. (Now we use money for the trade, but the specialization remains.) Turning SEO over to a professional firm frees you up to do the things you're good at--just like eating at a restaurant frees you up to spend time and energy on other things.

Choosing an SEO firm
An older family member probably taught you that if you walk into an unfamiliar restaurant and see that the dining area is dirty, you know it's not a safe bet to eat there. After all, if they don't bother to clean the area you see, what is the kitchen like?

This kind of common sense wisdom is passed from generation to generation. But we don't have this benefit when it comes to choosing an SEO firm. Search engines have only been in wide use for about ten years, and companies dedicated to search engine optimization are even newer. For a few years, many SEO firms had an "anything goes" attitude toward optimization, using all sorts of tricks to get high rankings and draw traffic. Search engine companies fought back by cracking down on the more deceptive methods, now referred to as "Black Hat SEO." Good SEO firms have learned how to work with the search engines, rather than trying to trick them.

How do you tell if an SEO firm is a good one? Here are some tips:

• Be wary of companies guaranteeing results that they don't have complete control over, like search engine rankings.
• Ask about a company's standards and code of ethics.
• Get a sample copy of a contract to look over. Make sure that what they will do is clearly laid out. Also be aware of what they expect you to contribute to the process, and what protection you have if the work is unsatisfactory.
• The company's methods should be varied, including keyword research, linking campaigns, content writing/editing, and site layout/navigation. If the company only talks about one method of optimizing your site (or focuses on only one major search engine), then they won't help you as much as a company that covers all the bases.
• Good SEO takes time to work, and it benefits from periodic reviews and updates. Your SEO firm should not give you the impression that you'll see amazing results within ten days, and they should be available to monitor their efforts and "tweak" the optimization methods as time goes on.

In time, the SEO industry will get more respect, as the stigma of "Black Hat SEO" passes, SEO firms become more standardized, and people see what a great return on investment optimization is. I expect that in the future, search engine optimization and other forms of Internet marketing will become a standard part of website packages. But for now, many people remain in the dark about what a good SEO firm can do. You are no longer one of them. Take advantage of your knowledge and find a company that can maximize your website's potential. You'll be enjoying a five-star dinner, while your competition chokes down more of that mac and cheese.