Having a web site is becoming more of a necessity than a choice in a world where pretty much everyone owns an Internet connected computer. Even local businesses, which always relied on foot traffic, traditional media and the Yellow Pages, are realizing many prospective customers find it quicker, easier and more informative to find services and products in their geographical area.
An informed prospective customer is more likely to call a company that lists services, prices and products rather than blindly go over short ads in the local phone book or in a newspaper. If a company is targeting national or even global sales, the Internet is the obvious choice.
The first step for a web site owner is to identify the keywords customers may use to find the business. If you offer landscape services in Miami, some obvious choices would be for example "Landscape services in Miami" or "Miami landscapers". How does one know if a key phrase or keyword is searched in good numbers and therefore warrants an SEO effort. Fortunately there are services such as Wordtracker that can tell anyone the number of searches conducted for any given term. Wordtracker not only provides this information but other very useful data to make the right decisions. Other sites such as Google AdWords and Overture give a webmaster the ability to find other related keywords with the Keyword Suggestion Tool. These are very useful services because the take the guessing out of finding which terms may be searched.
Once the keywords are identified, it is time to find out how your competition fares in the search engines. For local search phrases, such as "Florists in Boise", the competition is not likely to be fierce. With time, basic HTML skills and SEO tutorials available on the Internet, it is possible to optimize your site without having to hire an SEO company. If you wish to read more about basic SEO techniques, see our .
There are many resources available to the public to figure out if other web sites are very established and well optimized. Google publishes the Pagerank score (PR). PR is one measure Google uses to score the importance of a site. The score goes from 0 (the lowest) to 10 (the highest). Only a few sites ever achieve a 10. If your competitors' PR is for example a 6 and your site is a 1, it is very unlikely you will be able to rank well in Google.
When is it then necessary to hire an SEO$%: A few factors play a part in the decision. First, if the field is very competitive, the level of expertise required to achieve the desired results will call for a professional team that constantly monitors search engine algorithm changes and has the experience to know which steps to take to improve ranks. SEO is both an art and a science. Talented SEOs spent years learning code and trying different methods to help their clients. It is an ever changing business where what worked 6 months ago may not help at all now. Because search engines constantly change the way sites are ranked quite frequently, it takes a natural talent and instinct to get "feel" of what needs to be done to stay on top. Time is another factor in deciding whether to do it yourself or hire someone. Again, in a very competitive field it takes many man hours for the most experienced SEO to accomplish effective optimization. Most companies do not simply have the time and resources to do it in house. Hiring a SEO expert full time as an employee is only feasible as a long term solution. Only very big companies with extremely complex web sites go this route. It is much cheaper to hire an SEO rather than having an on site employee dedicated to this task.
There is no question that any form of correctly performed search engine optimization will benefit most businesses. The choice of doing it yourself or hiring and SEO company is a business decision that may affect a business's long term success. The time and expertise requirements I discussed should be carefully analyzed before choosing which route to go. Finally, make sure that when you either hire someone or do it yourself, no harmful techniques are used. Bad SEO can hurt a web site. Google in particular has penalized and even banned sites that abused the system with unethical SEO practices.
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