Hiring An SEO Company Versus In-House SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is very much a buzz phrase.  Often companies looking to learn more about SEO are baffled at how this new field of marketing can gain them an edge.  Well it has been proven time and time again that it definitely can gain an edge over your competition.  The problem a business has to assess is whether they should employ a specialist SEO Company or use existing resources within their respective IT Departments or Do It Yourself.  We will explore the advantages and disadvantages of each.

In-house & Do It Yourself

Advantages: You have complete control.  You can change things instantly.  You will learn about the inner working of your website and also learn more about the Internet and how search engines work.

Disadvantages: It is a specialized field and attempting to do it delays the inevitable and allows your competition to gain an edge on you; also you may end up with more problems in the future by getting it wrong.

You will need to have an intimate knowledge of your website, how it works, HTML and possibly any scripting languages that the website uses, like PHP.  Also, you will need to buy some commercial tools to use, like WordTracker, WebPosition and SEO Elite.

WordTracker allows you to effectively research Keywords, WebPosition allows you to track your websites ranking in the search results for given keyword phrases and SEO Elite allows you to track all links to your website.

Purchasing these three necessary pieces of software will cost you around USD$900.  Also, you will need to have a lot of time to read about SEO, take online courses, attend workshops, listen to podcasts, and read as much SEO material as you possibly can.

For an SEO course you are looking at about $10000 to $3000.  Total for In-house DIY, roughly $1500 to $4900.  Not being experienced enough to know when and what to change.

Not knowing how to link build effectively.  Not having any time to study and learn enough to make the correct changes and modifications to your website - estimated at about 200 hours of study, learning and analyzing.

As SEO takes time to see any results in the search engines it is important to not only learn the required knowledge to implement SEO but also give yourself the time to make tweaks and ongoing analysis.  So to setup and configure an average website with 10 static pages it will take you probably 2 days and ongoing link building will be many, many countless days.  Also, you need to take your time so that you do not overdo your SEO, spamming and stuffing keywords into pages as this can be as detrimental as not doing anything to the website in the first place.

Hiring an SEO Company

Advantages: You don't have to use internal staff resources or alter the focus of your business.  Hiring a specialized online marketing and SEO Company will mean you have instant access to experts in the field who have a wealth of knowledge and resources.  An SEO Company will know the lay of the land without you having to learn what they already know to expert levels.  The Online Marketing Company will be your best partner in working towards achieving your online Internet marketing objectives.

Disadvantages: Using an Expert SEO Company will cost you money.  It is important to realize that even though you have hired a firm to implement your Search Engine Optimisation you will still need to work in consultation with them in order to market your website online correctly - explaining your internet marketing goals, objectives, deadlines and budgets.

While the advantages and disadvantages of optimizing your own website and employing an SEO Company are diverse I think it important to point out that no matter how good you think you are an SEO firm will always be better at SEO.  So if you really want to see results, you have very little time then hiring an SEO company is the only way to go.  If you have time and some website expertise then you may be willing to put in the time and try doing it yourself.  My only thought on this is that you wouldn't hire a plumber to fix a problem with your car.

When all is said and done, good Search Engine Optimisation will get your website results.  It is important to make sure you are making the right decisions in your online marketing as this may well be the lifeblood of your business and is certainly an effective way to promote your business and generate sales leads.

Misconceptions About Search Engine Optimization

Picture this scene, a boy walks into a barber shop and says to the barber, Don't touch me, I'm only here because my mom forced me.

Search engine optimizers are sometimes put into the position of the barber. They are knowledgeable and willing to work on their client's site, but the client doesn't want any modifications done to the text that is visible on her web pages. This kind of dilemma occurs due to general misconceptions about search engine optimization. Let's look at these misconceptions.

1. SEO only involves writing meta tags and working on invisiblecode

Many people want to get a high ranking for various keywords or keyword phrases, but if you look at the text on their web pages you can hardly find these vital words. They come to a search engine optimizer and think that he or she will sprinkle these words into the meta tags and it will work like magic. This is a major misunderstanding.

It is true that your main keywords and key phrases should be in your title tag and your description meta tag, and even in the keywords meta tag, but they must also appear on the page itself and they must appear in some strategic places on that page.

Some clients say, But I like the way it looks now.You may like the way it looks, but the search engines will not recognize that your page is truly about Electronic Widgets unless these words appear in headlines on the page, in the opening paragraph, in the file or domain name in link text and in the body text of your page.

So, by all means if you already have copy that works, that can convert visitors into buyers or otherwise accomplish the purposes of your site, keep it. But you should also be ready to listen to what the optimizer has to say about modifications that will enable search engines to select your site when a potential buyer makes a query for your key words or phrases.

2. Search Engine Optimization is Tricking the Search Engines

Some clients say, Don't touch the visible copy but put in the modifications invisibly.

Using invisible text is something that can get you banned from a search engine. The main purpose of search engine optimization is to give your website the best possible chance to come up in good positions when someone makes a query for your keywords or key phrases. The key to doing this is to design web pages and write copy that is intelligible to search engines, without sacrificing the experience and understanding of your end-users, the people who visit your site. So, don't ask your SEO professional to try to trick the search engines, but work with him or her to present your website in the best possible way.

3. Search Engine Optimization deals mainly with onsite modifications

Even if your website is well designed, has proper meta tags and has keyword-rich text, this alone does not guarantee that your site will rank high in competitive queries. All of these factors, design, meta tags, and copy, are on-site factors. Search engines certainly take them into consideration, but they also value off-site factors such as how many high quality or authoritative websites link to you. This means that hand-in-hand with your on-site optimization you and your promotion team will have to embark on a campaign to get links to your websites coming from websites that are already highly regarded by the search engines and by the public in general.

4. Search Engine Optimization works instantly

Don't expect to get a flood of traffic right after your site has been optimized. Some search engines work in a fairly rapid manner, but the main search engine at the present moment, Google, is believed to have deliberately put an aging delay into its algorithm. This means that it may take several months before your site makes it into the top results for your particular category, especially if it is a newly created site. During this initial period you will also have to consider using other promotional methods such as pay per click advertising, article marketing, joint ventures, paid advertising in ezines and offline advertising.

So, the next time you work with a search engine optimizer, let him or her go about the task of making your website both user friendly and search engine friendly.


Contact an SEO and Internet Marketing Specialist at Champion SEO Consulting For Assistance With Your Online Marketing Campaigns (310) 889-0771

Natural Search Engine Results and Website Consulting

You scroll down past the banner ads and enter your search term. You pass the "sponsored results" without a glance. You ignore the shaded results to the right, as well as the additional "sponsored results" at bottom. Hiding somewhere in the middle of it all, you finally find the results you came for. 

Welcome to the world of natural search- a world where mom-and-pop shops compete with million dollar companies, where million dollar companies compete with billion dollar corporations. And, while many will argue to the contrary, the playing field is more or less level. Small companies can and do dominate their behemoth competitors in this world, for a variety of reasons. 

What Is Natural Search? 

For those who aren't quite clear what the term means, "natural" or "organic" search describes the "editorial" search results on any particular engine. 

These results are purported to be completely non-biased - meaning that the engine will not accept any amount of money to influence the rankings of any individual sites. This is quite different than the paid advertising that appears in "sponsored" or "featured" results, in which higher positions are rewarded to the companies willing to pay the most per visitor. 

Why Is Natural Search Important? 

Savvy searchers who understand the difference between paid and natural results are more likely to hold the natural results in a higher regard, much like a person reading a magazine would probably be more positively influenced by an article about a particular company than by a paid advertisement from the company. 

It is also likely that natural search will become more important in the coming months. Yahoo's new Site Match program, which mixes some paid results with natural results, is certain to get some close scrutiny from the FTC (even though the fees paid are not supposed to influence rankings). 

This type of public attention will no doubt educate some oblivious users as to what "sponsored results" actually are. More importantly, other search engines are likely to use this as a means of differentiation from Yahoo. It is no coincidence that Ask Jeeves announced that it was getting rid of its similar program the day after Yahoo's new program was unveiled, claiming that it was impossible to produce unbiased results using this methodology. Microsoft also recently claimed that they were taking steps to further differentiate paid results from natural results. No matter what the end result, one probable outcome of this new attention to paid search engine advertising is that more average searchers will learn the differences between paid and natural search results, and many will instinctively favor the latter. 

What Advantages Do Huge Corporations Have? 

Certainly, large companies do have some specific advantages when it comes to natural search. 

a. Links- the primary advantage that large corporations have is their ability to obtain large amounts of inbound links, which can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Often these links are given freely without the company asking (or being aware that it is happening). 

Many of the huge corporation's vendors, affiliates, partners, etc. are eager to show their association with the company and link to the corporate site readily and non-reciprocally. Large corporations can also facilitate huge increases in link popularity through a simple corporate policy requiring inbound links from any companies wishing to work with them. In addition, very large corporations may have several websites, which can sometimes be effectively linked together for additional link popularity. 

b. Budget- although history shows that a large percentage of major corporations do not spend wisely in this arena, larger corporations typically have larger marketing budgets then their smaller competitors. However, this does not necessarily mean that they will readily allocate a portion of that budget for search engine optimization, as discussed below. 

What Advantages Do Smaller Companies Have? 

While the advantages of huge corporations, particularly in the area of link popularity, can be difficult to overcome, it is often unnecessary to try. A large percentage of such companies consistently seem to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to natural search engine optimization, a primary reason why small companies can often outperform them. Specific advantages include: 

a. A willingness to pursue the channel- Smaller companies are typically more willing to devote resources to natural search than large corporations. Huge things have to happen for a major corporation to get involved in this "new" channel, a channel far removed from the traditional marketing methodologies used to build the giant. Few corporate underlings want to be the one to put their neck on the line and recommend something completely new and "unproven". Even when a large corporation looks into natural search engine optimization as a potential marketing tool, it can take many months, and sometimes years, for a final decision to be made. 

b. A willingness to change the company website- Huge corporations face similar problems when it comes to changing to the corporate website. Within such entities, a person can often not get so much as a comma removed from the text of a secondary page without holding several upper-level management meetings and, ultimately, making a board presentation. Smaller, leaner companies are able to approve necessary website changes more quickly, and are almost always more willing to quickly adapt to the needs of both visitors and search engines. 

c. The willingness to outsource- Larger companies have more internal resources at their disposal, and are less likely to outsource this specialized service to someone with proven experience. Often, search engine optimization is treated as an afterthought and dumped on an IT person, who typically has too much to do already and will approach the problem solely from a technical standpoint. Natural search engine optimization is by necessity a combination of marketing and technology. Newcomers to the field (especially those who treat the discipline as strictly a technical issue) often make fundamental mistakes that at best do not get results and at worst put sites at risk of penalization. 

d. A lack of technical hurdles- Huge corporations are more likely to have technical issues on their website that can prevent search engines from indexing all of their pages. Often the pages of corporate websites are generated "on the fly" from large databases, and such pages (without modification to the URLs) are sometimes never indexed. 

In addition, (although usability studies are making this happen less often), some huge corporations have their sites built entirely in flash or use other technologies that are virtually invisible to search engines. 

The Bottom Line 

To most huge corporations, search engine optimization is often a very small piece of an enormous puzzle - and it is a piece they have been doing without for years. The necessary steps required to fully embrace the channel are often enough to stop any well-intentioned initiative in its tracks. As most search engine optimization experts will tell you, some of the most egregious search engine mistakes are consistently made by household name companies - leaving their smaller, leaner competitors the opportunity to take full advantage.