3 Choices in SEO
In my video blog that I wrote on What is SEO, I mentioned that there are 3 important choices that can be made regarding internet marketing.
The three choices are:
- Hire professional SEO services
- Learn search engine optimizations and internet marketing yourself
- Put your head in the sand and let your business flail until it goes under
In the world on the Internet (marketing aside) – there are all sorts of things that people go to the Internet to do – shop, read the news, find jokes, do research – all the things that people do in the offline world, they now are spending a considerable amount of time doing online. So what ever community you may have in the offline world – your business, your industry, your city, your charity, your school club – you can have these same communities in the online world.
In the offline world – where you have a brick and mortar store of some sort – you either hire someone to do your marketing, you learn to do it on your own, or eventually you go out of business.
The online world is exactly the same
Outsourcing SEO – Outside Your Company Walls That Is!
In today’s global economy, the term outsource oftentimes conjures thoughts of hiring someone from another country, where the the project can be done for 1/4th the cost that it would to have it done domestically. But that is not the outsourcing that I’m referring to – at least not specifically. I’m talking about outsourcing your SEO efforts outside of your company, to an SEO consultant that specializes search engines and online traffic generation.
Two of the most important questions that arise from your intended use of SEO are, “how much are you willing to spend?”, and “are you going to outsource the SEO?”. Why are these important? For starters – they force you to commit to a plan. Without a plan there can be no action, without action you can’t win.
So do you outsource? A lot of it will depend on your budget and your goals. If you have an extremely limited budget, you might be able to hire a part time traffic assistant from another country that can do some off-page link building for you – but there is risk involved with this scenario. Often times the paid traffic generation companies use automated software, or do things that Google and other search engines aren’t really fond of. This could have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. If you can’t outsource, then you might also consider doing the SEO by yourself. The downfall is that this takes away from your business that you run, and takes time to learn and implement. SEO is an ongoing effort, and not a one-time shot, so if you start it, you better be able to finish it, or the time you spent starting the SEO effort will be wasted.
Destroy Your Keyword Trophy Mindset
Ever get in the middle of conversation about whose is bigger, better, or strongest?
Now I don’t want to get caught up in the semantics of what they’re talking about… that would likely lead us off topic – but ever think about what it’s really accomplishing?
Well search engine keywords aren’t too much different… think about it… “My keyword ranks number 1 on Google, and number 3 on MSN and Yahoo… Beat that!”
This is what I call a “Keyword Trophy”. Where you get some mythical prize if you rank number one for some set of keywords. But is a keyword trophy really worth anything? Sometimes, but usually not.
Let me explain. If you had no competition, (more…)