The Pros And Cons Of Doing SEO Yourself Vs Using An SEO Agency

The Pros And Cons Of Doing SEO Yourself Vs Using An SEO Agency

For any website to rank well on search engines and thus benefit from the organic traffic that this generates, search engine optimisation (SEO) is essential. Of that fact, most business and website owners are aware. However, what many of them are not so sure of is how they ensure that the necessary SEO is achieved. More specifically, they may have a dilemma in deciding who will carry out the SEO.

Whilst they have several choices, the two main ones which they are likely to be considering are doing the SEO themselves, or hiring an SEO agency to do it. Both of these options have their respective pros and cons, so let us look at them all in the hope that this may help you make this decision if it is one you are currently in the process of weighing up.

Pros Of Doing SEO Yourself

  • Cost Savings: One of the most significant advantages of doing SEO yourself is it will cost you less. By handling SEO on your own, you avoid the cost of hiring an SEO agency or consultant, however, you might wish to consider the opportunity cost of you spending your time on SEO rather than you focusing on other elements of running your business.
  • Control: If you do the SEO yourself, control over the process is entirely in your hands, therefore, you can make whatever changes you wish to your website at any time and without delay. This can be especially important if you own a small business that needs you to make quick adjustments to its website in response to changes in the market.
  • Learning Experience: Doing SEO yourself can be a valuable learning experience, helping you develop new skills and knowledge that you can use to improve your website and your business. Bear in mind, SEO is constantly changing due to updates from Google and other search engines, so be prepared to continually update your knowledge.
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Planning for a successful integrated digital strategy Part 4

Benefits of A Customised Social Media Marketing Strategy Part 3

Increased Loyalty To, and Awareness Of Your Brand

Your customised social media strategy will have many parts to it, and each of them will add not only to the awareness that people of your brand, but it can also increase the loyalty that those who are existing customers or clients, feel towards it.

In terms of awareness, social media is a really effective way of achieving that. Bear in mind, your campaign is likely to be active in multiple platforms, and there is also the real possibility that a really good post or piece of content is shared, to the point of going viral.

To a local business that might not seem as important as it might to global business, but do not dismiss its impact though. Every one of those shares, even if from someone on the other side of the planet, is a signal to Google that gives your search engine ranking a boost.

As for brand loyalty, the more your customers are exposed to your social media posts, the more they will associate themselves with being one of your customers. Also, your customised campaign will have specific posts that help to cement that loyalty.

This is particularly important now, as the customers who are buying today now include the Millennial generation born between 1980, and 2000. These are known to be especially loyal to companies, businesses, and brands that engage with them on social media.

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Planning for a successful integrated digital strategy Part 3

Benefits of A Customised Social Media Marketing Strategy Part 2

Increased Inbound Traffic

Online business has a currency, and that currency is traffic. Usually, the companies that can generate the most traffic to their online properties, such as their websites, are the ones that are the most successful.

With that in mind, your customised social media campaign will be generating currency for your business, not in dollars (that will come), but in terms of traffic. That traffic will be visitors to your website who may have clicked there or searched for it, having been exposed to some of the social media content that has been created as part of the campaign.

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Planning for a successful integrated digital strategy part 2

Benefits of A Customised Social Media Marketing Strategy Part 1

Whichever business niche, sector, or industry you are in, any marketing campaign which is implemented to increase customers and revenue, needs to have a social media strategy included as part of it.

The reason why, is simply that 3 out of every 4 people use social media, and more important than that, the vast majority actually use and refer to social media before making an online purchase.

Now you may not be a local business where customers actually buy your product or service directly from your website. However, if you want them to take action that may lead to a purchase, such as filling out an online enquiry form, or calling you on the phone, then social media is every bit as relevant and necessary.

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10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 3

10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 3

Vague Explanations of Their Processes

If an SEO agency is not prepared to give you an explanation of how they operate, then the question that needs asking is ‘What have they got to hide?’.

With a poor agency, the answer is going to be either they do not have any processes and thus the campaign will be a shambles, or they use black hat techniques and do not want to reveal that to you.

Little or Poor Reporting

As part of your research, you should be asking what the reporting from the SEO agency is going to be. Good SEO agencies will have detailed and regular reporting, which is what you want to see.

However, poor agencies who know they are not going to get results will shy away from giving you regular reports, and if that is the case with any prospective agency you are looking at, do not even consider hiring them.

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10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 2

10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 2

Low Ratio of Staff to Clients

When speaking to a prospective SEO agency, always ask them about their staffing levels. One point here is that many agencies sub-contract out specific areas of the work, and there is nothing wrong with that, especially if they are giving those parts of the work to experts.

However, if an agency tells you they have 90 clients, 3 staff, and everything is done in-house, that should set alarm bells ringing.

That ratio means that each member of staff is servicing 30 clients each, and given the time necessary for proper SEO analysis, planning, implementation, monitoring, and adjustments, it suggests that each client’s campaign is getting hardly any time, if any, each day.

Negative or Poorly Handled Reviews

Presumably, you already know to seek out reviews and testimonials, but one other thing to look for carefully is how the agency handled those reviews, especially the negative ones.

As we mentioned previously, no business is perfect, and even the best gets it wrong sometimes. If they have an unhappy customer who has left a 1 or 2-star review, look to see if the agency has responded. If they have and have also taken full responsibility for their error, then that is a positive sign.

If they have simply ignored it, or worse, pushed back on the customer and started an online argument with them, they are not an agency you want to do business with.

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10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 1

10 Red Flags That Should Raise Concerns When Assessing SEO Agencies Part 1

When any business owner is seeking to employ another company to work for them or carry out some kind of service, it is normal practice to take some time to assess one’s options, and carry out a reasonable level of due diligence.

This should especially be the case when selecting a digital marketing agency, and there are number of reasons for that. The first is that carrying out SEO is a service which differs in several ways to many others, because the actions that the agency will undertake can actually change during the contract due to the nature of search engines and how they often ‘move the goalposts’ with little or no notice.

Another reason is that an SEO campaign is something that doesn’t always have a finite end. For example, if you employ a company to come in and replace the five printers that you have in your offices, once they have replaced them, set them up, and have them working, their job is done.

Compare that to SEO, where a campaign’s length is something that might not be defined due to the many external factors that can affect a website’s rankings.

You may be in an incredibly competitive niche where your competition is working every bit as hard to gain or maintain their rankings as you are. In that case, you may retain your SEO agency’s services for longer, or even on an ongoing basis to ensure your rankings remain high.

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