Get Your Business Ready for SEO
Writing by Brick Marketing in SEO
In a previous post, we discussed how to get your website ready for SEO. A great site is essential for SEO success, but it’s important that your business and team members are ready for SEO as well.
The first thing that your business will need to decide is whether SEO will be handled in house or outsourced. Perhaps the most important factor in making this decision is the kind of resources that you have available to you. For a small business, it may not be possible to hire an SEO firm. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get an SEO campaign started. SEO isn’t rocket science. With the right SEO training, most people that understand business and how to use the Internet can work at an SEO campaign. Depending on the size of the business, it can be an additional duty of the marketing person or staff or even the small business owner themselves can work at it. It’s just important to remember that an SEO campaign needs to be worked at consistently. A large business may opt to hire a full time SEO Specialist to work in house, but most businesses simply aren’t able to add an additional salary. For the businesses that fall somewhere in the middle of a very small business and a very large business, outsourcing the work is often the best option.
If you decide to go the outsourcing route you will need to decide internally who will be the point person. What many businesses don’t understand is that you can’t hire an SEO firm and then disappear. There needs to be ongoing communication between both parties regarding the strategy and implementation. If your SEO firm has a question and you aren’t getting back to them with an answer, it will slow things down. On the other hand, your business needs to feel comfortable with your SEO provider and essentially treat them as part of the team. If they are left out of the loop regarding changes to your business, those changes won’t be reflected in the SEO strategy and opportunities may be lost.
An extremely important part of SEO is content. Marketing content is what fuels both an SEO and a social media campaign. If a business wants to be successful in SEO they need to understand this right out of the gate and be on board with generating content on a regular basis. Content can be written and created by the marketing/writing team of the company. If it’s not possible, an SEO company with writers on staff can take on the work (typically at an additional cost) but they will need guidance. An SEO copywriter isn’t an expert in your industry. It’s very important to provide them with lots of direction if they are going to be creating content on your behalf.
The last thing that a business will need to do to prepare for SEO is to hire a good web developer. An SEO Specialist will recommend website changes, but you will need someone trustworthy to implement them. The best option is to find a web developer that understands SEO and is willing to work with your SEO employee or firm throughout the implementation process to ensure that things are done correctly.
