Give Your SEO Firm Guidance
Writing by Brick Marketing in SEO
If you’re in the market for an SEO firm or currently working with one there is one very important thing that you must understand; you are an integral part of the SEO process. As much as some SEO firms may like to claim that they can “do it all”, it’s really not true. SEO firms have SEO Specialists on staff that are good at what they do, which is SEO. However, SEO companies work with clients across a variety of industries and certainly aren’t experts in every industry. As an SEO client you will need to be there to guide the work.
Some SEO clients don’t understand how important this is. There is a misconception that they can sign a contract and then essentially disappear knowing that someone else is handling the SEO work. Understandably, an SEO client hires an SEO firm because they don’t have the time to handle it in house. However, going into the SEO process with an SEO firm it is necessary to understand that it will also take a time commitment on the client’s part. It won’t take as much time as handling the SEO completely in house, but the client needs to be a strong presence throughout the SEO strategy creation and implementation.
The SEO process includes steps that need to be completed in order before moving along to the next one. Each step will require input from the client. It all begins with keyword research. Based on a thorough review of your website and business goals and competition an SEO firm will spend time researching potential keywords to target throughout a website and within additional content. An SEO firm might be able to pick out which keywords would be best based on search volume, but might have difficulty with the relevancy factor. That is where the client needs to step in and review the keywords to make a note of the ones that they don’t want to target.
Once the SEO firm has a list of approved keywords, the next step is to incorporate them naturally into the website content. The SEO firm will make recommendations based on SEO expertise, but what it really comes down to is your visitors. If you don’t think that a keyword fits in a certain place or somehow changes the meaning of a sentence, speak up.
The ongoing component of an SEO campaign is link building. In order to find good linking opportunities an SEO firm will ask for all kinds of information including a list of competitors, advertising information, a list of sponsored events, and content and or content topics. It may take some time to dig up all of this information but it’s really in the best interest of the SEO campaign.
While it’s true that you are paying an SEO firm to get work done, the bottom line is that an SEO firm will never execute a well rounded and accurate SEO campaign without your involvement. You know your business best and you will need to be there to approve SEO work in order to keep it moving and on track.
