You know you need to optimize your Web site to get more search engine traffic. Should you turn to the pros? We asked search experts for their advice
If your small or midsize business has a Web site, you know that one of the most important things you can do is to get that Web site ranked high on the search engine results page.
The value of making your Web site visible to search engines (known as search engine optimization, or SEO) to please the search engines is evident. The more readily Web crawlers can find you, the more prominent your site's ranking on search engine results pages.
DON'T MISS: Make the Search Engines Find Your Web Site
Who Do You Call?
How to achieve that high ranking? You probably know by now all about keywords, link building, and unique page titles. You know what it is you need to do. The question is, how do you do it? Or more specifically, do you go it alone or call in the hired guns?
"The right answer is somewhere in between," said Gord Hotchkiss, CEO and president of Enquiro, a search marketing agency, and the chairperson of SEMPO, a nonprofit organization serving the search engine marketing industry. It depends "on what you have the resources to handle internally and what you have to outsource. It's about getting knowledge and insights."
According to Hotchkiss, outsourcing every aspect of search engine optimization would mean, because of the all-inclusive nature involved in optimizing a Web site for search engine rankings, giving up complete control of your Web site, something most small and midsize businesses would, and should, be unwilling to do. "It needs to be a partnership," he said. "You don't want to lose control."
But Hotchkiss believes that within that partnership, SEO consultants can bring some good value to small businesses. "Any consultant will have a good understanding of search engines and algorithms," he said. "There is a learning curve that is fairly steep."
SEO Requires Time
Indeed, Google's continuous changes in its algorithms keep small businesses like Last Night of Freedom, a 10-employee company, busy. The company organizes bachelor party weekends, and managing director Matt Mavir is kept busy with search engine optimization for nearly a third of his working hours.
Mavir, who founded the business eight years ago, has kept his SEO work in-house -- search engine results account for nearly 90% of his business. But he said that businesses in very competitive fields should take on SEO consultants "because [search engine optimization] can really take some doing."
"It's a constant battleground," he added. "I constantly have to be on top of this."
Next Page: SEO Costs Money and Time
