Your website needs visitors to thrive. These visitors will not simply stop by your site, but rather, you need to attract and entice them to stay on your URL. What is the best way to garner valuable traffic? The all-mighty and powerful search engines!
The process of utilizing the search engines to garner traffic is called search engine optimization, or SEO. Strategies you incorporate into your site can make it more attractive to search engines, which in turn, will allow your site to rank highly. The higher your site ranks, the more likely you will get visitors when they search for certain keywords and phrases.
“But that sounds like a lot of work!” you say. Are you willing to do it all yourself? Or should you outsource your SEO details to a firm that specializes in helping websites get higher rankings on search engines?
There are pros and cons to both a do-it-yourself SEO effort and hiring a professional SEO firm. Let’s take a look at some of the important SEO functions and the pros and cons of each. You can thereafter decide if you want to undertake the entire DIY SEO effort, hire a firm to perform some of the SEO tasks, or outsource the responsibility entirely.
Links to your website play a large part in search engine algorithms. Therefore, it is extremely important for your website to acquire incoming links from reputable sites. Certainly, there are hundreds, even thousands, of directories where you could ask for an incoming link. However, knowing which ones are the best and knowing which ones to avoid can make a huge difference in your SEO link ranking.
What are some reasons you should do-it-yourself?
SEO firms can be a great resource for getting your link to all the right places that have the most impact on search engines. But beware of SEO firms that make promises that their linking strategy will surely raise your SEO ranking when this is difficult for anyone to guarantee. An SEO firm can help your link development by:
Your keyword and keyphrase content are extremely important in receiving high search engine rankings. Adding keywords to your meta tags in your html coding takes careful consideration in choosing which words and phrases to include, as well as knowing when too many keywords may get you in trouble with search engines.
The same holds true for keywords that exist within the visible content of each of your web pages. In order for search engines to find your website, you need good, pertinent, and concise keywords that allow search engines to rank your site in relation to a specific search.
You know your business better than any SEO firm. Though an SEO firm can suggest good keywords for your website, ultimately you know the words that best describe what you do and where you are. Additional reasons for including and updating keywords yourself are:
Outsourcing keyword and meta data content to an SEO firm can also have many benefits, including:
Websites that use a doorway page usually design a page that is specific to a certain keyword or phrase. When a visitor lands on the doorway page, you have a way to track your search ranking, and you can provide visitors more specific information about your product or service that pertains to their keyword.
If you plan to incorporate doorways into your website, there are a few elements to consider when making the decision between an SEO firm and a DIY effort.
If you are knowledgeable in HTML programming or have adequate web page software, you can create an attractive doorway with ease of design and function.
SEO firms are practiced at developing well-designed and functional doorway pages. If you want to outsource this option and have chosen a reputable SEO firm, then they can help your doorway by:
Following are some additional ways that you can evaluate an SEO firm.
If you are considering an SEO firm, evaluate their promise of continual SEO checkup and maintenance. Major search engines update their search algorithms on a regular basis. Google is notorious for changing their search procedures and algorithms to weed out the worst offenders of search manipulation. Make sure your SEO firm knows how to keep up with these changes and can make that commitment to you.
A great SEO firm will continually ask you for websites that you want to emulate, as well as the web addresses of your main competitors. They can gather important data about your competition and form a strategy to surpass them with SEO tactics. In addition, by knowing which sites you like, your SEO firm can have a clear idea about how your website should look and feel to your visitors.
If your chosen SEO firm does not ask these types of questions, drop them and move onto the next one.
Opting for an offshore SEO firm is a big question for most American web businesses. There are many offshore SEO firms that can work cheaply and save you money. However, the age-old phrase “you get what you pay for” comes to mind. An offshore may be a good deal, but you have to overcome many potential obstacles.
SEO can be the most important element in helping your online business boom. Though SEO is not easy, it can be done yourself. But with a little help from a reputable SEO firm, or allowing them to perform a full SEO overhaul on your site, you can gain valuable customers.
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