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Small Business SEO: Can You Really Afford it?

Let’s face it, when you look at it on paper, SEO is an expensive endeavor. Whether you do it yourself, use the services of a consultant, or hire someone else to do it for you, the cost can be overwhelming. In fact, some SEO experts charge as much as $500-$1000 per hour. It is such an involved process that the price tag is understandably pretty significant. As a small business owner, you have to decide whether search engine optimization is worth the expense. Can you afford to invest in SEO services? Can you afford not to? The key to affordable SEO is an efficient balance of necessities, time, and budget. Here are three things to consider as you decide whether SEO is right for your small business.

Necessities of SEO

Search engine optimization is a huge process, but not every component of SEO is necessary for every campaign. It’s no secret that the most fruitful campaigns utilize every type of marketing available, but doing everything doesn’t necessarily equal success. If you make sure that you’re doing the right things at the right time, then you can save time and effort while still creating a successful campaign.

Time to Invest in SEO

Time is the single most important aspect of SEO. It’s simply a time-consuming process. If you’re not spending your own time doing it then you’re paying someone else for their time. Because time is your most valuable resource, one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make is which projects you’ll take on first. Prioritizing your tasks will help you make good use of your valuable time. Tackle your top-priority tasks first and save the less-important ones for later.

As you consider your use of time, also keep in mind that SEO is part waiting game. Anytime you think about Organic search engine optimization, you have to remember that SEO results take a significant amount of time to show up online. Make sure you understand just how long it might take and how it will affect your business. Depending on the industry and the competition, better rankings take 4-6 months.

SEO Budget

This is the primary factor in determining whether you’ll spend your own time doing SEO or hire someone else for the use of their time. But don’t let budget be your only consideration. Also keep in mind the value added when a professional takes care of your web optimization tasks. Determine the value added by an SEO professional by considering the quality of work and the potential of the search engine optimization work to get results for your business, however, more money doesn’t always guarantee a better product. On the other hand, remember that you often get what you pay for.

You can only determine the true cost of SEO by looking at your return on investment. Remember that the true value of search engine optimization is greater than the sum of its parts. Even a small increase in time, money, and energy invested can net huge results. By investing whatever you can, whenever you can, and wherever you can, you can potentially see a big difference in your business’s success. Reinvesting your returns can lead to even more success, and SEO suddenly doesn’t look so expensive anymore.

The Cost of Doing it Wrong (Doing it Yourself)

And while it may be tempting to do SEO yourself, small business owners should especially consider hiring an internet marketing agency or search engine optimization expert. Small businesses are already at a disadvantage when it comes to SEO simply because of size and budget. Don’t risk putting yourself at an even greater disadvantage by doing it wrong or by inadvertently utilizing tactics that could harm your ranking or even get you banned by search engines like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Even if you choose not to hire an SEO expert to take care of all of your optimization tasks, consider hiring a consultant to check the work you’ve done. This is a good way to keep careless mistakes from happening over and over again.

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New Year Resolution: Take Internet Marketing Off Your To-Do List

If you’re like other internet marketers, you’re using this first quarter of the new year to take a little breather after the chaos of the fourth quarter. And while you’re regrouping, you may be determining how to prioritize your current tasks. Here are the top ten things you should be doing now. Surprise! Internet marketing is not one of them!

Test Your PPC Ads. Find someone who is good at generating a representative sampling and asking the appropriate questions, and then test your creative. Use several different offers, creative, keywords, and search engines. Use the results to tweak your ads.

1. Turn to social media marketing. If you don’t already have a social media marketing strategy, now is a great time to create one. And if you do already have a social media marketing strategy, now is the time to tweak it. Some great ideas include adding video and other media to your website, and participating in social communities. Consider hiring an internet marketing expert to help you determine how to use social media marketing to your advantage.

2. Monitor usability. Hopefully you had a large number of visitors to your site during the holiday season. If so, you probably received from feedback from those visitors about how to make your site more user-friendly. Take that feedback and make changes that can help visitors navigate your site more easily and find what they are looking for.

3. Check out keywords. What were your top converting keywords for the fourth quarter last year? Pay particular attention to the keywords that had some conversion numbers but low traffic. Those keywords may have been getting low search engine placement, or they may have gotten interested parties to your site who then couldn’t find what they were looking for.

4. Track offline conversions. Many sales that take place offline started with online research, so figure out how many offline sales are somehow connected to research conducted on your website. This can help you increase sales in the future. Which promotions were successful online? Which were successful online? Use this information to your advantage.

5. Optimize your site for local search. Thirty-two percent of all search engine queries are for products or services local to the person conducting the search. Optimize your website for your town or state.

6. Monitor your search engine results. Where is your company name and product or service showing up on the search engine results page? Who is at the top of the search engine results page when you search for variations on your company name? Are there any instances of negative feedback or negative comments when you search for your company name? If so, add your own clarifying comments or contact the commenter directly to see what you can do to improve his or her experience with your company.

7. Use data regarding returning customers. It’s so much easier to reach returning customers than new ones, so find out just how much of your company’s business comes from returning customers. Talk to your returning customers and find out what they like about your product/service/website and about what kinds of improvements they suggest. Take this information to heart as you constantly strive to be the best.

8. Pay attention to PPC. Try new terms and outlets for your PPC efforts that will more effectively and efficiently reach your target demographic.

9. Use consistent language. Whether your marketing efforts are focused online or offline, make sure you’re using consistent language across the board. When your message is solid and cohesive, you will reach a broader spectrum of potential customers.

Be sure to consult your internet marketing professional as you focus on each of these priorities. He or she will be able to advise you about how best to make each one work for the success of your company.

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The Costs of SEO

The Cost of SEO

The adage, “You get what you pay for,” is just as true when it comes to SEO as it is when it is applied to anything else. SEO experts are professionals, and professionals are, as a rule, paid well for their services. It is possible, of course, to find excellent SEO professionals who charge less than the going rate for their services, but hiring a low-cost SEO professional is definitely risky. And it is generally difficult to estimate just how much SEO will cost because the range of services and prices is so great. But you can likely count on SEO professionals charging a package rate or hourly rate. Here are the differences.

Cookie Cut SEO Solutions: Some SEO professionals offer a range of packages at set costs, and those costs are generally based on an estimated number of hours. The challenge behind hiring a professional who offers cookie cut packages is that your needs may not fall into the set of services included in that package. Before hiring an SEO professional who charges per package, find out what provisions he has for services that fall outside of those included in the package.

Hourly Rates: Hourly rates can vary as much as package rates can, but using a professional who charges by the hour is a little bit riskier. Will the professional be available when you need him or her or will he or she be working on someone else’s project during your darkest and most desperate hour? Using a professional who charges by the hour offers more flexibility than using one who charges by the package. You are more likely to be able to pick and choose the services you need, and that can be a great advantage in some cases.

Hybrid Customized SEO Packages: SEO 1 Services outlook on pricing on search engine optimization services is clear: Customized SEO is the right approach to succesful SEO! Hourly SEO will be very costly, and we are not fan the "one size fits all package" approach. Every business, industry, internet marketing strategy is unique and therefore requires a customized SEO solution. This personalized approach, by definition, covers most of the clients needs and restrict the need for hourly consulting time only to specific projects like copywrite or staff training.

Regardless of whether you choose a package deal or an hourly rate, there are some aspects of SEO that you will be charged for, and some that you won’t. Here are the aspects of SEO for which you should expect to be charged.

· Market research. In order to do his job, the SEO professional must be familiar with the industry and the target audience.

· Copy Writing. Writing the text for your website is daunting task, but it can make or break the success of your business.

· Tracking and Analysis. It really doesn’t matter what your SEO professional does if she can’t determine its effectiveness and can’t make changes based on objective results. Tracking and analysis are a crucial part of SEO evaluation and success.

· On-site optimization. These are changes that the SEO professional will make directly to your site in order to increase your search engine ranking.

· Off-site optimization. This includes link-building as well as submitting your site to search engines and directories.

You may also find that you have to pay for consultative services via email and phone, training, and report preparation. But by no means should you ever pay for automated submissions to directories or reports generated by SEO software. You should also steer clear of any SEO professional who wants to charge for regular optimization of your website. On-site optimization should be a one-time endeavor except for optimizing new pages that are created later or making necessary changes to current pages that will improve your return on investment.

In sum, there is really no way to estimate how much SEO will cost without first talking to a professional yourself. But before you do so, determine whether a cookie cut package, hourly rate, or the preferable customized approach that will best serve your needs, and be prepared to intelligently discuss what is and isn’t included in the price you plan to pay. You’ll be glad you did!

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The Cost of Mismanaging SEO

One of the most difficult decisions to make as a business owner is whether or not to outsource SEO or to handle it from the inside. The logic behind doing in-house SEO is that it will save the company a significant amount of money since outsourcing SEO can be an expensive endeavor. Many companies simply designate an existing employee to become the company’s “expert,” send him to a few training events, and let him start from scratch. But what these companies don’t understand is that mismanaging SEO, or letting someone other than a seasoned professional handle it, can cost much more in the long run than simply outsourcing SEO at the outset. Here are four ways that mismanaging SEO can affect your business in the long run.

1. Search Engine Penalization. The low-budget method of SEO, either hiring a less-than-optimal firm or having someone do SEO in-house, often results in getting your website penalized, or even banned, by the search engines. While some SEO professionals deliberately use inappropriate techniques (Black Hat SEO) to increase rankings, other overzealous in-house experts can end up getting your business penalized because they use questionable techniques without even knowing it. While these questionable techniques might get quick results, the ultimate result is penalization by the search engines, which puts your company in an even worse position than it was when you weren’t pursuing SEO at all.

2. Cheap SEO is Expensive. Simply put, if you invest money in SEO and it’s done poorly, you lose. You lose the money that you already invested, plus the additional money that you’ll have to shell out to get the job done correctly. This is actually the issue that concerns most companies the least since they understand that there is risk involved in pursuing an endeavor that the company has never before tried.

3. Time & SEO. Businesses are quickly realizing the benefits of search engine optimization, particularly given the current state of the economy. SEO is relatively inexpensive when compared to other marketing strategies and it levels the marketing playing field between large and small businesses. So it’s definitely the bandwagon on which you want to find yourself. The difficulty with SEO, however, is that it takes a long time before you’ll see noticeable results. And that’s if you have a seasoned professional doing it for you. If you take the time to train someone who already works for you, or if you hire someone who isn’t very good at SEO, you’re losing valuable time in which your competitors are potentially gobbling up your business. You need to do SEO, and you need to do it well and quickly.

4. The Give-Up Factor. Unfortunately, when businesses have bad experiences with SEO, either because they hired someone who was under qualified or because they tried to train someone in-house, they give up on the whole process altogether. They decide that SEO simply doesn’t work simply because they didn’t have the right person or people doing it. When companies give up on SEO altogether, they make a huge sacrifice. They sacrifice the revenue they might have earned had they made the initial investment in high-quality SEO, and they sacrifice the opportunity to get the word out about their business via people who have found the website and have told others about it.

Every business is obviously concerned about spending money in the right places, and the temptation is great for them to skimp when it comes to SEO, particularly if they are suspicious about its results in the first place. But the truth is that mismanaging SEO can cost more than hiring a reputable, high-quality firm from the get-go. Don’t let it happen to you! Cheap unqualified SEO is expensive!

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The 10 Pillars of Online Reputation Management

The rise of social media has created a whole new world for internet marketing, but it has also created a potential nightmare for companies who encounter less-than-optimal public relations situations. Disgruntled customers can share their bad experiences within minutes, and crises that put large number of people at risk can spell doom and gloom for businesses that don’t have an online reputation management plan. The key to online reputation management is having a plan before the crisis, whether the crisis is a full-blown epidemic or an angry customer posting disparaging remarks about your company on her Facebook profile. Here are the 10 pillars of online reputation management.

1. What Could Go Wrong? Plenty, that’s what. Sit down and consider all of the possible things that could go wrong and how to respond if one of those things should happen. As you’re making your list, you’ll notice that the possibilities fall into broader categories, making it easier to determine what to do in each case.

2. ‘Fess Up. It’s a viral world, and you’re only going to shoot yourself in the foot if you try to hide from it or ignore it. The first thing to do is to go public with an accurate retelling of the story. Make sure everyone is on the same page so that the story is same no matter who tells it.

3. Implement the Plan. If you’ve done #1, then you’ll be prepared to implement whatever plan you’ve created to address the issue.

4. Communicate Creatively. The first thing most folks will do when they hear about a crisis is to turn to the internet. Find out where most of your potential customers and others will be turning in order to find credible information about the situation. Then show up there, too, clearly communicating your solution to the problem.

5. Be Present Both Online and Offline. Make sure your story is consistent whether it’s being told on the internet or on the local news. Different media sources will try to develop their own stories about your crisis. Cut down on the amount of information they can use to distort the issue by making sure your story is consistent.

6. Keep the Information Flowing. Many internet users will continue to follow up on the story day after day to see if there are any new developments. Keep the information coming in the form of podcasts, investor communications, and blog posts.

7. Keep Your Message Up Front. Use both natural and paid search to keep your own message at the top of the search engine results rather than letting the top spots be usurped by negative messages about your company. You may need to hire an internet marketing professional with experience in reputation management.

8. Seek Out Friends. There are just as many friends out there willing to support you as there are viral detractors, so find those friends and let them work for you. The best way to do this is to keep telling your story truthfully and allow people to support you through positive PR and links.

9. Continue to monitor. The buzz will die down soon enough, but that doesn’t mean you can stop monitoring the internet. You’ll find that negative information will stick around for a long time, thanks to the archiving nature of the internet. Continuing monitoring and addressing the negative stuff that you find should be an ongoing process.

10. Find the Teaching Moments. Once the crisis is over, sit down with your team and evaluate the issues. How can the crisis be avoided in the future? Did the plan you made in #1 work effectively? How will you change it for the next time? Repeat this exercise anytime you hear of another company experiencing a crisis of online reputation management. Discuss the mistakes they made, as well as the effective responses, and adjust your own plan accordingly.

You can handle many of these steps on your own, of course, but always consider the possibility of hiring an internet marketing professional to help you create your plan and implement. It’s time, and money, wisely spent.

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SEO: Do You Need a Consultant or a Full Service Professional?

If you’re a business owner, then you no doubt understand the importance of SEO to the success of your business. But you may question whether you simply need to consult with an SEO professional occasionally or whether you need to turn over the entirety of your SEO to an expert. The answer to the question depends on several factors, including the size of your company, the importance of internet marketing to your overall business strategy, and your budget. There are other factors, of course, but these are the most influential. Use the following guide to determine the kinds of services you need:

SEO Consultants
SEO consultants aren’t necessarily responsible for the results of your internet marketing strategy. Instead, they are responsible for looking at the condition of your current internet marketing strategy and suggesting optimal next steps. They also don’t implement those next steps. It’s your responsibility to do that. If you need to be able to determine a specific return on investment of your time and money into consulting services, then this may not be the best way to go for you.

The positive aspect of using a consultant is that you don’t hand over all of your SEO responsibilities to him or her. This may seem like a drawback, particularly if you’re interested in hiring an SEO professional and washing your hands of it entirely. But keep in mind that hiring the wrong SEO professional can be detrimental to your company’s success if they use shady or underhanded techniques that get your site penalized by, or even banned from, the search engines. Consultants allow you to retain a good bit of control over your marketing strategy simply by offering training and advice.

Full Service SEO
Using a full service SEO is probably in your best interest if you simply don’t have time to do SEO yourself and still run the rest of your business. In that case, you need someone who can be responsible for all of the tasks involved in SEO rather than simply looking at what you have and making suggestions for future steps. But even if you use a full service SEO professional, do yourself a favor and check in from time to time to find out what kinds of changes they’re making and what techniques they’re using. You don’t want to walk in to your office one morning, confident in your great new SEO professional, only to find out that your site has been banned from Google due to black hat SEO.

It can be difficult to decide whether to use an SEO consultant or a full service SEO professional. As you’re making your decision, ask yourself how much control you want to retain over your internet marketing strategy. If you simply want someone to look at what you have and make suggestions, then a consultant is probably right for you. But if you want someone to take over the SEO process for you from start to finish, then hire a full service SEO professional. This is a particularly good idea if your business is new, small, or if you don’t already know a great deal about SEO. The time it takes for you to learn SEO yourself is enough time for your competitors to hire SEO professionals themselves and start attracting your potential customers. Whether you choose a consultant or full service professional, just do it quickly and see the difference it can make in the success of your business!

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PPC and SEO: Together at Last!

The argument between SEO supporters and PPC supporters about which is the most effective internet marketing strategy is as old as SEO and PPC themselves. If you’ve found yourself in the throes of deciding which strategy to use, review the following list of pros and cons and brace yourself for the surprise ending!

SEO: The Pros and Cons

The most obvious pro of SEO is the cost. While PPC involves payment every time a user clicks on your advertisement, SEO is free. Not only that, but once your site has been optimized, you will see the results for a long time. When using PPC, the results cease as soon as you stop paying for them. Another pro of SEO is that many users tend to trust natural listings more than they trust paid listings. Not only that, but users perceive you as more credible the higher your natural rankings are.

The cons of SEO include cost, competition, lack of predictability, and need for consistent monitoring. SEO involves more up-front costs than PPC, which can be a turn-off for many business owners, and rankings can change quickly depending on search engine algorithms and competitions’ management of their own internet marketing campaigns. It can be difficult to target customers with SEO, and it can be difficult to get a high rank for popular keywords. Finally, given the competition for certain keywords, it can be very difficult to maintain a top position once you have earned it. Constant monitoring is required to keep your website at the top.

PPC: The Pros and Cons.

Using PPC makes tracking visitors very simple and eases the entire process of calculating your ROI (return on investment). Cost is also an attractive aspect of PPC since you only pay when customers click on your advertisement. Additionally, while it can take some time to see the results from a natural search campaign using SEO, PPC results can be almost immediate. PPC allows you to run your ads only when you want them to run, and it allows you control which parts of your site your visitors see first. Using the appropriate keywords in PPC also means that it’s easier to market directly to your target audience.

Aside from the cons mentioned above, PPC can turn out to be expensive if you aren’t willing and able to monitor it correctly, and you always run the risk of getting clicks in an unethical manner.

In the end, you will probably benefit from using a combination of PPC and SEO. Since it does, in fact, take time to see results from SEO, you may choose to use PPC to drive traffic to your site until natural search results take over and make PPC unnecessary for your successful business. Once that happens, you may want to use PPC to call attention to new products or special offers and to focus on keywords for which your site hasn’t yet been optimized.

In addition, you’re probably going to be better off spending your marketing budget in more than one place. Depending only on one marketing strategy can be risky in the long run and focusing on both can reduce that risk.

If you’re new to internet marketing and still trying to decide which marketing strategy to use, or how to use both effectively, consult with an internet marketing expert. He or she can help you manage both your SEO and PPC strategies and can help you optimize both so that your business becomes successful in a short amount of time. You can’t afford not to put 100% into internet marketing, so do it right the first time by hiring someone with extensive experience who can put you on the path to success!

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Increase your ROI and Conversion Rate by Knowing Your Buyers

It’s no secret that one of the most important things you can do for the success of your business is to track visitors to your website. There are lots of ways to go about tracking visitors, but you’ll find that investing in an up-to-date, state-of-the-art tracking system will pay for itself over and over again in increased conversions and sales. The most effective tracking systems, and the ones in which you should seriously consider investing, are those that can help you determine which of your ad campaigns are most effective, those that can show you which keywords bring in visitors who eventually become customers, and those that can give you demographic information about your customers.

Here are four ways that a good tracking system can help you increase your return on investment and conversion rate.

1. Just Stopping By? A good tracking system will tell you which visitors to your website actually become customers so that you can tweak your marketing scheme to play up those elements that are most attractive and relevant to those who eventually purchase your products or services.

2. Finding the Right Keywords. If you choose general keywords that are also optimized by your competitors, you will likely see very little return on your investment into optimizing for those words. A good tracking system will help you determine exactly which search terms are being used by those who eventually become your customers. These keywords are typically specific, and they are used by internet searchers who have already done a good bit of research on your product or service. And everyone knows that the more research a potential customer has done, the more prepared he is to take the plunge and purchase a product or service. Focus on the keywords typically used by people who are finishing up their research and you’ll see a huge difference in the number of conversions you experience.

3. Get to the Top. Your goal as a business owner is to create a website that is attractive and accessible to everyone who stops by. After all, people who aren’t even interested in making a purchase but who enjoy your website will likely come back later when they are interested in making a purchase. But your real efforts should be concentrated on getting your name in front of the people who are ready to make a purchase right now. A good tracking system will help you determine which strategies will work best as you try to get yourself in the optimal location to attract visitors who will convert quickly.

4. Wise Spending. You already know that you’re going to have to invest some money in internet marketing in order to see results, but you’re cheating yourself if you’re not spending that money wisely. A good tracking system can help you determine where your money is best spent. When you know which visitors convert to customers, you can figure out where to best invest your natural search and pay-per-click dollars. Internet marketing is become more and more competitive every day, and you can’t afford to simply throw money at it without first doing some serious research.

There is no doubt that you will get great results from using a good tracking system to help you figure out which of your visitors are converting to customers. But you’ll be even better off if you use the services of an internet marketing professional in conjunction with that system. An internet marketing professional can help you interpret data and make wise decisions regarding how to best position yourself in front of the kinds of visitors who become loyal customers in the future.

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Hiring an SEO Company: 9 Questions to Ask

You’re a business owner who understands the necessity of SEO to the success of your business. You’ve decided to hire an SEO professional or SEO company to do it on your behalf. Now, how do you find the lucky person who is going to take your business from good to great by getting you top search engine rankings? This can be tricky. There are plenty of people out there who claim to be SEO professionals, but you need someone who has gotten results in the past and who can tell you exactly how he or she plans to get results for you. Once you’ve found one or two potential professionals, either by word of mouth or by a tried-and-true Google search, conduct an interview and ask these important questions.

1. What kind of experience do you have? The longer a professional has been in the business, the more likely it is that she understands the evolution of SEO. She will have more in-depth knowledge of the search engines, as well as what works and what doesn’t. She will understand which techniques are above-board and which ones can get your website penalized by, or even banned from, the search engines. But don’t eliminate less experienced professionals simply because they haven’t been around very long. Go with your gut.

2. Will you provide references? Don’t rely solely on the portfolios that SEO professionals post on their websites. They may not post all of the clients simply out of respect for confidentiality, so ask for a list of clients and well as references.

3. How long do you typically work with a client? Ideally, your relationship with your SEO professional will be ongoing. After all, their job, after getting you to the top of the search engine rankings, is to keep you there. Inquire about how long they typically work with clients and if any clients have terminated contracts in the past.

4. What kinds of SEO techniques do you use? Black hat SEO techniques are frowned upon by the search engines and can get your site banned from the search engines. Make sure that the professional you hire is committed to ethical practices. If he or she guarantees a top spot in the search engines, you can be sure that he or she isn’t using ethical practices. Run quickly the other way.

5. Who owns the copyright? Ideally, you will pay the professional to become the sole owner of the work that he or she completes for you. This gives you more control over your website.

6. What is your involvement in the SEO community? Hire a professional who is a member of professional forums and associations, who has written extensively on the subject of SEO, and who makes presentations at SEM conferences. This helps ensure that the professional is reputable, well-respected in the field, and uses above-board techniques for getting results.

7. How long will it take to get search engine results? Any SEO professional worth his or her salt should be able to provide visible results within 3-6 months. Again, if the professional claims that he can get you results within a week, or even a month, run away.

8. How will you report results? Be sure any SEO professional you hire is eager to show you reports that give you an idea of the effectiveness of the SEO campaign.

9. Do you use a template plan? Avoid any professional who stops with researching keywords and basing SEO on those results. You want to hire someone who is invested in the success of your unique company, and this includes someone who wants to learn as much about your industry as possible in order to get the best results possible.

SEO is key to the success of your business, so don’t leave it to chance. Hire a professional who is ready to dedicate himself or herself to you and to your business.

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Do-it-Yourself SEO: Yes or No?

Most businesses don’t need to be convinced that SEO is one of the primary ways to ensure a successful business presence on the internet. Given current economic conditions, SEO is one of the most cost-effective ways to do marketing for both large and small businesses. The challenge facing many business owners now, however, is whether to hire an SEO professional to take care of SEO tasks or to teach someone within the company how to do it. There are certainly advantages to each alternative. For many businesses, the cost of professional SEO is simply out of reach. But for others, the question remains: are the results of professional SEO worth the money I am about to spend to hire an expert in the field? When you’re making this tough decision for your own business, consider these pros and cons of do-it-yourself SEO.

The Good News:

1. The costs involved in do-it-yourself SEO are minimal. Sometimes they are non-existent.

2. You never have to relinquish control over your website. This means you also save a lot of money as you don’t have to explain exactly what you’re looking for to another person. The ideas you have in your head are immediately transferred to your website.

3. Experimentation is always a possibility. If you hire an SEO professional, you may get charged every time you want to tweak this or change that. If you do it yourself, you can change your site as often as you like and track the results.

4. You never have to leave the house.

5. You’ll have an incomparable sense of pride in yourself and in your business when you see your search engine ranking get higher and higher and see the increase in traffic to your website.

The Bad News:

1. Inadvertently, or even purposefully, using inappropriate SEO techniques can get your site penalized by the search engines. It may even get your site banned altogether.

2. SEO is not an overnight process. It takes a lot of time and energy to learn to do it correctly and to learn to do it well. There are lots of facets involved in SEO, and keeping up with all of them can be time-consuming.

3. Chances are good that your competitors are using SEO professionals. So while you’re sitting at home in your pajamas reading every book and website you can find in order to prepare yourself to do SEO, their SEO professionals are already off and running. As a result, you’re losing potential customers and a lot of revenue.

4. SEO is never finished. You might be tempted to rest on your laurels once your website has reached the first page, or even the top, of the search engine results. But then you have to work to keep it there. An SEO professional’s time is dedicated to keeping you at the top. You, on the other hand, have to manage the rest of your business. Take your eye off of those search engine rankings for just a second and you’ll find yourself back at the bottom.

The three main questions you need to ask yourself when considering whether or not to hire an SEO professional are: How much time do I have to dedicate to SEO? How much time do I need to be spending on the rest of my business, and How important is online marketing in the scheme of my entire business strategy? While SEO may seem cost prohibitive, consider the costs of doing it yourself. You risk your site being penalized or banned. You lose potential customers to your competitors who have SEO professionals working for them. And you have to spend an inordinate amount of time on SEO rather than tending to other important parts of your business.

Can you afford to do it yourself? Think about it!

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12 Ways to Make Sure You Hire the Right SEO Company

If you’re a small business owner trying to take charge of your own SEO but not getting the results you want, it may be time to consider hiring an SEO professional. Unfortunately, there are a lot of shady players out there and it’s not hard to get drawn in by someone who promises you the world but ends up delivering next to nothing. That’s not to say that all SEO professionals are unreliable or out to get your money, but you’d be wise to do a little homework before hiring someone. Here are 12 ways to make sure you hire the right person:

1. Unobtainable Promises. Run away from any SEO professional who guarantees to get you a #1 ranking. No one can promise you that, and anyone who does so is most likely going to use unethical techniques to make it happen.

2. Get Recommendations. Talk to family, friends, and other business owners to find out who they’ve used and whether or not they were pleased with the results.

3. Inquire in Forums. If you don’t personally know someone who can give you a reliable recommendation, try posting on a webmaster forum. Forums aren’t as reliable as face-to-face recommendations, so be sure to follow up on any recommendations you get before hiring someone.

4. Do a Search. Type the name of the person or company you are researching into a search engine. If the subject you’re searching for has a bad reputation, you’ll know right away based on the results you get. But just because you don’t see anything bad doesn’t mean that the person or company is completely reliable.

5. Look at Examples. Before you hire anyone, ask to see samples of their past work and the names of clients. If a potential SEO professional claims that he or she can’t show you any examples or give you a name of a client, consider this a bright red flag.

6. Look at their PageRank. If their own PageRank isn’t at least a 4 or 5, then you should probably look somewhere else. If they can’t optimize their own page well, why expect that they will do a good job on yours?

7. Ask them about their techniques. If they use automated submissions or any black hat SEO practices, stay away. Those kinds of practices can get your site banned from the search engines. This means that you need to familiarize yourself with what black hat SEO is and how it is done.

8. Look at their Keywords. When interviewing a potential SEO professional or company, find out which keywords their site ranks for, then check out those keywords. If they don’t rank well, stay away. Like PageRank, if they can’t do a good job with their own keywords, they probably aren’t going to do a good job with yours.

9. Check out backlinks. Backlinks are one of the keys to internet marketing success. If the SEO professional gets backlinks from link farms, stay away. You only want links from reputable sites.

10. Talk in person. This is one of the best ways to get a gut feeling for whether or not you will work well with this person and whether or not this person is reliable.

11. Don’t rely on price alone. Budget SEO is expensive in the long run, but don’t be fooled into thinking that a high price tag guarantees great results, either.

12. Inquire about follow up. Does this professional continue to work with you to maintain your high ranking or does she get you a top ranking and then leave you high and dry to maintain it yourself? Chances are, you want someone who is going to be in this for the long haul, so avoid companies that are going to get you to the top and then leave you on your own.

Hiring an SEO expert or company is never a bad choice when it comes to the success of your company, just make sure to hire the right one by following these guidelines!

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5 Keys to Starting Your Search Engine Marketing Career

Search engine marketing is becoming one of the most popular and interesting careers available. Business owners are finding it necessary to scrimp and save every penny due to the current economic downturn, making search engine marketing one of the most economical ways to generate traffic and sales. And while many business owners are interested in doing search engine marketing themselves, many will find hiring a search engine marketing expert a worthwhile investment given the amount of business that they expect to see in return. So if you’ve been toying with the idea of starting a search engine marketing career, stick to these fives steps:

1. Read. Before you do anything else, educate yourself. The internet is full of valuable information on search engine marketing. Start with industry blogs, website, and forums, which is where you’ll find both great information and successful search engine marketers from whom you can glean much. There are also plenty of books available on pay-per-click marketing, link development, and search engine optimization, but they can’t promise the up-to-date information that you can find on the internet.

2. Listen and Watch. Once you’ve read everything you can get your hands on about search engine marketing, start looking for podcasts, webinars, and videos produced by top companies in the industry. But don’t just stop at these resources. Also look for local events where you can network with others in your area. You may not learn a lot that you didn’t already know, but you’ll definitely make valuable contacts. Attend national events if you really feel like there is valuable information that you can get from them.

3. Get Certified. It isn’t enough simply to know about search engine marketing. You would also be wise to pursue SEM certification. There are many industry certifications available, and each one adds value to your work in a different way. If you want to go in-house and work for a large agency, you should seriously consider formal training. In addition to looking to national organizations for certification, also check out your local community college or four-year university.

4. Meet everyone you can. Networking is one of the greatest keys to search engine marketing success. Social networking sites are a great way to do this, and there are even social networking sites that cater directly to search engine marketing. But the most valuable contacts are those you make face-to-face at local or national events. If you’re looking for a way to connect with local search engine marketing professionals, but there are no scheduled events in your area, conduct an informational interview. You might also consider contacting local marketing trade associations to increase your contact base as well.

5. Apply. You can read, listen, watch, and network all you want, but you’re never going to figure out what you’re made of until you actually put your skills and contacts to work for you. The best way to start out is by creating your own website. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, get someone in your family or circle of friends to help you out with it in exchange for your services. Once you’ve created your website, contact local companies and offer your services to them for a small fee. Then they’ll be able to recommend you to other potential employers. Continue to expand your portfolio any way you can.

The more quickly and closely you follow these steps, the more quickly and successfully your search engine marketing career will get off the ground. If you’re still unsure about how to get your career going, contact a local SEO expert or internet marketing professional and pick his or her brain about the next steps. You’ll be glad you did!

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