Friday, July 22, 2011

SEO - justifying the time & effort

Yesterday an article I contributed to was published. You can read it here: http://directorsof.com/network/advice/07/21/is-my-digital-marketing-agency-taking-me-for-a-ride

For this article I was asked for advice on a hypothetical dilemma, where a website is getting no Search Engine Optimisation benefit after five months of an agency working for them. And whilst this was a fictional problem, it does highlight the real issue a lot of companies have with SEO services...... "how do I know they are giving me value for money?".

As I highlighted in the posting, there are some things it is possible for an organisation and its search agency to influence, whilst there are others (e.g. the work done by competitors and their SEO agencies, plus the workings for the search engines themselves) that are beyond their control. And as the popular phrase states: "Only worry about those things you can change and don't worry about those you can't".

But that's easier said than done, especially for a client who may not know which is which and therefore makes unrealistic demands upon their agency. It is really only by having a collaborative approach to SEO, with both the company and SEO agency understanding and working together to optimise things (such as their site and in-bound links) to get the most benefit.

Failing to do this may well mean the client underestimates the time and effort gone into the optimisation efforts and raises questions such as the one raised.

2 comments:

Seo Company India said...

I think this might be a problem of on-page optimization.

Hayden Sutherland said...

What leads you to that conclusion? Surely SEO is a combination of on-page and off-page work, plus monitoring competitors and what the search engines are doing??