Is it really necessary to hire an SEO company, for up to several hundred dollars a month, to get more visitors to my website(s) or are there ways to get more attention that I can implement myself?
Hi Denice. My hosting provider provided a couple of ways to add keywords myself to my homepage and this increased my ping rates from queries substantially. SEO companies try to compare you to other businesses that may be similar, but I found that the keywords I used were more focussed on what I was selling (I am quite unique in my service offerings) that what the SEO company could provide. So a quick search on your hosting providers site should give you the hints you need to start adding better search keywords.
Try thinking about it from a return on investment standpoint. What is your average customer worth to you? If your average customer is worth $200 in the first year of doing business with you and you have to spend $200 per month to get SEO done on the site, you would have to get 12 new customers to break even. If the site got you 10 new customers per month, you would have an ROI of 1000%.
Weigh the time you would have to spend against the value you receive from that time and compare it to the SEO. If you were out making cold calls and you could close more business doing that, then out source the SEO.
Its all about ROMI or return on marketing investment.
If you keep on top of your own content (a lot of in depth content) along with backlinking you can help get yourself higher but it is difficult and depends on the competitiveness of your market/area. It's becoming more competitive and as we move into voice searching it is going to and will change in the future. If you can stay on top of everything on your own as well as keep up with your regular day to day work more power to you. It could be tough it just depends on what you're looking to do SEO for.
The bottom line question that needs to be asked is..will I spend $500-$1000 a month to generate an extra 200-300% ROI? The answer should be simple unless you're a business owner not interested in growth or additional sales. There is an effective way to increase your business exposure and traffic online using the power of the #1 search engine in the world and without having to do anything yourself. This strategy works well in certain niches, and real estate happens to be one of them. It has nothing to do with SEO tactics. I can share more information if your interested.
I've hired out and I have my own in the past. Both equaled the same results.
I agree that if it is working, don't change it. Best results would be using a WordPress SEO plug-ins and if you are already paying, continue to do so. In a few months, you should see results. If not, reconsider your approach.
Use the hell out of any additional applications as noted elsewhere in this thread. In addition, the occasional Facebook/Google ad campaign wouldn't hurt either.
It is difficult to find a truly reputable SEO professional. I would shy away from SEO companies. Find an individual who comes to you from a personal referral. Sorry to be cynical but most companies are well-oiled machines and do not provide personalized service. I've seen so many take advantage of my clients over the years. Your website should be built with organic optimization from the start. Correct meta tags, photos should have names that represent your product or service, not "homepage.jpg" That's the sad thing; too many businesses have to hire someone to fix what a bad web designer built.
Business from Sylva, NC
Answered on Jul 27th, 2018
Hi Deni, How much is your time worth and how effective can you be at driving traffic? Example - Why do some people hire maids? One reason is their personal or professional time is more valuable to them than what they would pay a maid. Also, they may lack good cleaning skills and/or can't stand cleaning. It's a trade off.
So if you have the time and knowledge, go for it. Me? For a few hundred bucks, I'd give it a try.
No, you do not need to hire a SEO company to manage your websites SEO. Google has developed highly sophisticated algorithms (algorithm names: panda, penguin, and humming bird) to help improve the content they show on thier search engines. With that in mind I will tell you some SEO tips that will help you get ranked faster in search engines.
1- get your website connected with search engine console. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Alexa are the big four. Especially Google though since over 62% of all internet searches are through them.
2- when it comes to your actual website it is not to hard to implement SEO on your own (if you are using a CMS like Wordpress). If you have a purely static website then it will be harder and you might need a developer to make necessary changes to your website. But if you are using a CMS then it boils down to these factors. 1. Create content on a regular basis (aka blogging). With a CMS like WordPress this is very easy. This content should always be optimized for THE USER and not search engines. This was truly the blessing Google gave us with those three prementioned algorithms above. 2. Get that content out on social media platforms. A giant part of SEO is social engagement. Shares, likes, retweets all of it will help your website rank better as a whole organically in search engines. 3. Make sure to use alt tags on images. Use relevant headings (h1 usually reserved for the title of your post, h2, h3, google does not look really beyond h3 headings so h4, h5, and h6 are not really relavant), and make sure that you have a meta description filled out. 4. Do keyword research to make sure that the keywords you are trying to rank for actually has traffic. Then turn those keywords into a long tail keyword phrases. There is too much competition online to try to rank for just single keywords. By using a long tail keyword phrase you greatly reduces your competition in the Search engines. Make sure you use keywords in at least your title, one heading(h2 ,h3),your meta description, and one alt tag on your images in your content. The rest is based more on L.S.I or Latent Semantic Indexing. Fancy word, but just means use words that pertain to the topic of you content. (Example: I have a post about dogs. Instead of keyword stuffing by saying dog over and over again I would use words like puppy, k9, fur, bark, things like that). Great news is that LSI happens naturally if you know what you are talking about.
3- if you are wanting to get ranked better locally, then you can use your towns name in some of your posts titles and headings. It also helps if you incorporate SCHEMA in your website as well. SCHEMA is an advance way of telling search engines what your site is about. This can be done during development of your website and embedded into the html directly, or you can use JSON to accomplish this as well post development. There are a lot of user friendly JSON SCHEMA apps out there where all you have to do is plug in your info and the JSON code will automatically be populated for you. One key thing you want to incorporate in you JSON code is the latitude and longitude of your town. That will get you ranking nicely locally. You can always verify you have good SCHEMA code with your seach engine console under tools.
Hope I didn't overload you too much. The SCHEMA is more extra credit but will get you ranking on the first page of Google since not too many websites actually implement SCHEMA into their website.
If you are paying for SEO then you should be making sure they are giving you highly user-friendly content (around 2 a week) so that you can rank first on Goolge multiple times. Otherwise you are just wasting money. Also make sure that no black hat so tactics used on your website as this will get you black listed from google.
If you need any help just contact me at evergreenbydesign.com or email me at [email address]
While i might have chosen different words than Jeff Poole used to explain the emerging dynamic as I see it, I do believe his sense of the direction of things is spot on. I have actually discontinued my website as none of my paying business was coming to me via that platform EXCEPT when I used it as a blog repository and posted the blog contents to social media outlets under my Langley Photowerx brand. The social media connectors are the new public square both personally and commercially. Globally accessible websites are likely unnecessary for a business that functions in a much more local fashion. As a photographer, who's "potential" market for digitally transmitted products is global, my business remains largely local - driven by interpersonal relationships and recommendations. Which is how my clients, (and I), seem to prefer it. Your online marketing needs to focus almost exclusively on an integrated social media platform with multiple outlet channels, (e.g. - facebook + instagram). You can focus your ads better, you gain more meaningful insights to your local market, and you connect yourself, to your work, while still drawing a bright enough line between them that people can tell which one they are talking too in any particular conversation. The "SEO" is built into the platform. You need to focus on becoming a WHIZ at social media. Websites utility are, for me, limited to static information libraries and wiki's. Social is the new marketing platform.
Answers (11-20)
Hi Denice. My hosting provider provided a couple of ways to add keywords myself to my homepage and this increased my ping rates from queries substantially. SEO companies try to compare you to other businesses that may be similar, but I found that the keywords I used were more focussed on what I was selling (I am quite unique in my service offerings) that what the SEO company could provide. So a quick search on your hosting providers site should give you the hints you need to start adding better search keywords.
Try thinking about it from a return on investment standpoint. What is your average customer worth to you? If your average customer is worth $200 in the first year of doing business with you and you have to spend $200 per month to get SEO done on the site, you would have to get 12 new customers to break even. If the site got you 10 new customers per month, you would have an ROI of 1000%.
Weigh the time you would have to spend against the value you receive from that time and compare it to the SEO. If you were out making cold calls and you could close more business doing that, then out source the SEO.
Its all about ROMI or return on marketing investment.
If you keep on top of your own content (a lot of in depth content) along with backlinking you can help get yourself higher but it is difficult and depends on the competitiveness of your market/area. It's becoming more competitive and as we move into voice searching it is going to and will change in the future. If you can stay on top of everything on your own as well as keep up with your regular day to day work more power to you. It could be tough it just depends on what you're looking to do SEO for.
I've hired out and I have my own in the past. Both equaled the same results.
I agree that if it is working, don't change it. Best results would be using a WordPress SEO plug-ins and if you are already paying, continue to do so. In a few months, you should see results. If not, reconsider your approach.
Use the hell out of any additional applications as noted elsewhere in this thread. In addition, the occasional Facebook/Google ad campaign wouldn't hurt either.
It is difficult to find a truly reputable SEO professional. I would shy away from SEO companies. Find an individual who comes to you from a personal referral. Sorry to be cynical but most companies are well-oiled machines and do not provide personalized service. I've seen so many take advantage of my clients over the years. Your website should be built with organic optimization from the start. Correct meta tags, photos should have names that represent your product or service, not "homepage.jpg" That's the sad thing; too many businesses have to hire someone to fix what a bad web designer built.
Hi Deni, How much is your time worth and how effective can you be at driving traffic? Example - Why do some people hire maids? One reason is their personal or professional time is more valuable to them than what they would pay a maid. Also, they may lack good cleaning skills and/or can't stand cleaning. It's a trade off.
So if you have the time and knowledge, go for it. Me? For a few hundred bucks, I'd give it a try.
Good Luck!
No, you do not need to hire a SEO company to manage your websites SEO. Google has developed highly sophisticated algorithms (algorithm names: panda, penguin, and humming bird) to help improve the content they show on thier search engines. With that in mind I will tell you some SEO tips that will help you get ranked faster in search engines.
1- get your website connected with search engine console. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Alexa are the big four. Especially Google though since over 62% of all internet searches are through them.
2- when it comes to your actual website it is not to hard to implement SEO on your own (if you are using a CMS like Wordpress). If you have a purely static website then it will be harder and you might need a developer to make necessary changes to your website. But if you are using a CMS then it boils down to these factors. 1. Create content on a regular basis (aka blogging). With a CMS like WordPress this is very easy. This content should always be optimized for THE USER and not search engines. This was truly the blessing Google gave us with those three prementioned algorithms above. 2. Get that content out on social media platforms. A giant part of SEO is social engagement. Shares, likes, retweets all of it will help your website rank better as a whole organically in search engines. 3. Make sure to use alt tags on images. Use relevant headings (h1 usually reserved for the title of your post, h2, h3, google does not look really beyond h3 headings so h4, h5, and h6 are not really relavant), and make sure that you have a meta description filled out. 4. Do keyword research to make sure that the keywords you are trying to rank for actually has traffic. Then turn those keywords into a long tail keyword phrases. There is too much competition online to try to rank for just single keywords. By using a long tail keyword phrase you greatly reduces your competition in the Search engines. Make sure you use keywords in at least your title, one heading(h2 ,h3),your meta description, and one alt tag on your images in your content. The rest is based more on L.S.I or Latent Semantic Indexing. Fancy word, but just means use words that pertain to the topic of you content. (Example: I have a post about dogs. Instead of keyword stuffing by saying dog over and over again I would use words like puppy, k9, fur, bark, things like that). Great news is that LSI happens naturally if you know what you are talking about.
3- if you are wanting to get ranked better locally, then you can use your towns name in some of your posts titles and headings. It also helps if you incorporate SCHEMA in your website as well. SCHEMA is an advance way of telling search engines what your site is about. This can be done during development of your website and embedded into the html directly, or you can use JSON to accomplish this as well post development. There are a lot of user friendly JSON SCHEMA apps out there where all you have to do is plug in your info and the JSON code will automatically be populated for you. One key thing you want to incorporate in you JSON code is the latitude and longitude of your town. That will get you ranking nicely locally. You can always verify you have good SCHEMA code with your seach engine console under tools.
Hope I didn't overload you too much. The SCHEMA is more extra credit but will get you ranking on the first page of Google since not too many websites actually implement SCHEMA into their website.
If you are paying for SEO then you should be making sure they are giving you highly user-friendly content (around 2 a week) so that you can rank first on Goolge multiple times. Otherwise you are just wasting money. Also make sure that no black hat so tactics used on your website as this will get you black listed from google.
If you need any help just contact me at evergreenbydesign.com or email me at [email address]
Have a great day and hope this helps.
While i might have chosen different words than Jeff Poole used to explain the emerging dynamic as I see it, I do believe his sense of the direction of things is spot on. I have actually discontinued my website as none of my paying business was coming to me via that platform EXCEPT when I used it as a blog repository and posted the blog contents to social media outlets under my Langley Photowerx brand. The social media connectors are the new public square both personally and commercially. Globally accessible websites are likely unnecessary for a business that functions in a much more local fashion. As a photographer, who's "potential" market for digitally transmitted products is global, my business remains largely local - driven by interpersonal relationships and recommendations. Which is how my clients, (and I), seem to prefer it. Your online marketing needs to focus almost exclusively on an integrated social media platform with multiple outlet channels, (e.g. - facebook + instagram). You can focus your ads better, you gain more meaningful insights to your local market, and you connect yourself, to your work, while still drawing a bright enough line between them that people can tell which one they are talking too in any particular conversation. The "SEO" is built into the platform. You need to focus on becoming a WHIZ at social media. Websites utility are, for me, limited to static information libraries and wiki's. Social is the new marketing platform.
Seo can be useful in the start up of your company ,that being said your client references are best to expand your market