The Benefits of Hiring an SEO Agency

Any agency that says you can’t do SEO by yourself is lying, but the truth is doing SEO on your own is difficult. It will be a much slower reaping of benefits. While even novices can improve their website by applying some basic search-engine-friendly tips, a good SEO agency can benefit you in a slew of ways that novices can’t. Before you spend valuable time learning all the SEO ropes on your own, consider hiring a professional SEO agency for consulting, strategizing, or straight-up optimizing a website for you.

Why a good website matters

Since a good website keeps your business open 24-7, you can reach new customers to assist overall growth. This potentially constant exposure to your customer base allows you to try out new markets and attain better conversion rates.

Why SEO matters

A well search engine optimized website is a better website. Since most of the major search engines do their best to find websites that users want, gearing your website towards search engines will improve your business by

Bypassing competition
Creating a better and more user-friendly website
Building a devoted fan base through newsletters and social media
Building brand awareness with better rankings

While SEO is not the only important aspect of a website, it naturally builds a stronger and more comprehensive interface for your customers.

Why SEO Agencies Matter

Saving time by delegating SEO responsibility to an agency

Proper search engine optimization is a full time job that requires thorough research, attention to detail, and a large quantity of quality content and links. Many businesses do not have the time to learn and apply SEO strategies to their website, but can easily assign the responsibility to a third party. Distributing such a large responsibility to others allows you to focus more on your business offline. This decision can relieve stress while juggling online and offline business.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than amateurs?

While an amateur can learn the SEO ropes and improve your business’s website, an agency provides a wide variety of benefits, including:

Better results
Dedication to long term strategy
Fresh perspective
Lots of valuable resources
Staying up-to-date with the latest search engine developments

Like any good business model, your website should invest in solutions that last. An SEO agency has the experience and talent to make your website—and by extension your entire business—be all it can be.

Delivering better results

Contrary to popular belief, “better” does not mean “immediate” results. Typically, results that appear too quickly are the result of untrustworthy SEO that can easily be penalized by search engines later on. Instead, better results may include higher rankings, deeper connections with your target audience, and many more opportunities to increase your company’s profits. These better results mean a greater return on your investment.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than amateurs? Unlike an SEO amateur, SEO agencies don’t struggle with a learning curve. Agencies know what works and what will waste time in getting better results.

Example: Pay Per Click (PPC)

Problem: Imagine you own a business that sells waffle irons and you have begun a pay-per-click campaign on a search engine. However, your sales have not increased enough to make up for the money you’re spending to post ads on Google.
Solution: Better results are especially important for PPC campaigns considering you’re spending money to make money. Like many aspects of SEO, pay per click campaigns are most effective when carefully honed with a lot of attention to detail. After some in-depth research, the SEO agency you hired tracks conversion statistics on your e-commerce site and discovers that your company is only targeting competitive generic keywords such as “waffle maker” and “waffle iron.” Creating PPC ad groups that target brands rather than generic keywords causes your overall profit to increase compared to your original advertisement.

Experience can mean a lot of things, from doing things right the first time to knowing which results are worthwhile. An SEO agency can guide your online business in the right direction.

Dedicating all their resources to SEO/Long term strategy

Unlike many amateurs, SEO agencies do not have to balance search engine optimization with other priorities. This benefit allows them to dedicate everything to long term strategy. Long term strategy means no cutting corners with spamming or confusing search engines. Legal or “white hat” SEO methods help prevent any major drops in your website’s popularity later on. Cutting corners to get immediate results can result in a penalty from search engines. Through long-term strategies, your website will remain available on search engines regardless of how their algorithms shift. These strategies may feel more time-consuming in the beginning, but ultimately cause less stress later on as search engines change their crawling methods.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than amateurs? SEO agencies’ experience typically makes them more thorough when it comes to long-term strategy. Their strategies more likely to stick than an amateur’s.

Example: link building

Problem: You are head of a company that provides freelance masseuses and couples massage packages at a few local resorts and you have gone out of your way to gain links on several websites for local boutiques selling body oils and aromatherapy candles. At first, this accomplishment appeared to boost your rankings on search engines as well as draw more potential customers to your site. However as time went on your website dropped rank and traffic to your site slowed, even though you didn’t change anything about your site and the links were not removed from the other sites.
Solution: Only using “white hat” methods is always a good rule of thumb, but just because the sites linking to you are reputable and high in traffic doesn’t mean that’s the end of your journey. Link building is a time consuming activity that includes building relationships with other businesses and websites and mutual contribution with said businesses. The process is also constant: fresh links are more valuable than old ones. The last thing you want is for your links to go stale. By hiring an SEO agency to assist in this task, your website gains links to sites with a wider variety of subjects—from travel guide blogs to massage how-to’s—with greater regularity than a one-time event. As a result, demand for your company’s freelancers rises and your client base expands to include new resorts.

Due to the internet’s inherently evolving nature, search engine optimization means constantly investing time and resources in order to stay relevant. Unlike your business, an SEO agency has the capability to fulfill this full-time position.

Bringing a fresh perspective

Sometimes, the best way to relate to your audience is to have someone describe and advertise your business in layman’s terms. A fresh perspective can unveil the best course of action. For instance, your target audience may be bigger than you think. Accessing the less informed and educating them can be a great way to draw traffic to your company. By expanding your perspective, your website provides more brand awareness to your target audience.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than amateurs? SEO agencies make certain their fresh perspective supports your goals.

Example: search engine operative user experience

Problem: As CEO of a large chain of bridal stores, you feel your online store should be performing better than it currently is.
Solution: Even if your brand stands on its own offline, you still need a good website to support and build on your brand’s reputation. Also, a website does not function the same way a real life retail store does. This may seem like common sense, but a good SEO agency can show how your online customers search for bridal stores and how they expect your site to function. By consulting with an SEO agency, you realize that your online store should have different filters that cater to each customer’s priorities. This change allows customers to make their decisions more quickly, resulting in a higher-performing website.

It’s easy for businesses to get stuck in a rut caused by a separation between company and customer. An SEO agency can bridge that gap and return your business to the status it deserves.

Maintaining connections to resources

Some aspects of SEO require people who specialize in one field. By accessing experts in a specific field such as copywriting, PPC, and link building, SEO work is of higher quality and accomplished more efficiently.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than amateurs? SEO agencies have had the time to build connections with on-site and outsourced specialists. Rather than hire these people individually, you can hire one company with well-maintained professional relationships.

Example: social media

Problem: You want to promote conferences and parties at your events hall, but lately only a slim margin of your followers have seen your business’s Facebook posts.
Solution: Social media like Facebook is more about human interaction than selling a product such as your venue. An SEO agency can access a combination of specialists to draw more attention to your business’s posts. Link builders can draw connections between your business and other common interests of your fans. Copywriters can create punchier statuses that capture the attention of your average newsfeed browser. Social media marketers consult with you about posting photos and videos, which typically have a higher chance of being “liked” and shared by fans.

The world of SEO professionals is usually broader than the average offline businessman thinks. By investing in a good SEO agency, you immediately link your company to this far-reaching network of SEO experts.

Keeping in-synch with the most recent SEO developments

Search engines are always updating and tweaking their algorithms for how they rank websites. Some updates are released to the public with a specific list of ways you can improve your website’s rankings. In other instances, SEO professionals conduct experiments and research on their own to discover the best way to optimize websites in order to make this information available to the public. Therefore, it is important to keep up as new developments arise. If your website does not adapt to updates, you may be out-ranked by those who do. This will drive less traffic to your site and may result in falling sales.

How do SEO agencies accomplish this better than an amateur? SEO agencies stay connected with the latest changes to search engine algorithms by performing constant research and attending conferences with the best experts in SEO. By staying in-synch with these search engine updates, an SEO agency can quickly adapt to changes and keep your website from falling off the map.

Example: copywriting

Problem: You’ve run a website for several years that discusses outdoor opportunities in Colorado like camping, hiking, and rock climbing. Although your website performed well the first year, you’ve noticed an increase in competition from other sites, causing a drop in search engine rankings and less buzz about your articles.
Solution: Search engines like Google are frequently making sweeping updates to how they crawl content. By hiring an SEO agency with experienced copywriters, you learn that some of your pages that ranked highly for certain keywords are much older than other sites ranking higher than you today. By linking newer content that is appealing to your current target audience to these “dead” pages, more recent visitors are attracted to the older content. As a result, search engines can notice these pages’ continuing popularity and put your website at the top of the list.

Since SEO agencies live, eat, and breath SEO strategy, they are more adept at keeping your website going than the average SEO newbie.

Your Options for an SEO Agency

If you are interested in hiring an SEO agency to handle your website, there is more than one option available to you. The two most popular ways to incorporate an SEO agency into your company are:

Outsourcing to a pre-existing SEO agency
Building an in-house SEO agency for your business

Depending on the type, size, and reach of your company, one option may be favorable to another. Regardless of which method you choose, any experienced, competent, and professional SEO agency will benefit you in more ways than you can imagine.