In-House SEO Consulting Assistance
Many medium or large companies have the resources to perform in-house SEO. They may not have a complete team though as proper SEO takes programming experience, marketing know-how, skilled copy writing, and experts in usability and search engine optimization. Even if you have someone in-house who has been performing online marketing for a few years you can benefit from a professional SEO consulting firm as well.
In-House SEO Challenges
In-house SEO success takes building and organizing a large multi-disciplined team. Prioritizing goals, managing assets, defining tactics, tracking results and continual improvements are just part of the equation to online success.
Getting many people from multiple departments to align for a common goal can be a challenge. Outside consulting and management can help.
For larger global companies there can be too many people and in some cases they are located all over the world - that would need to be involved with designing, programming, marketing, copywriting, long term strategy, measuring results and ROI. It may be impossible to delegate the responsibility to just one group.
Helping everyone understand their role and getting them to meet deadlines and fulfill their commitments may be a challenge that unless met, will inhibit the success of your internet marketing efforts and could derail the drive and work of the other team members.
Initiating an online marketing plan can be a daunting task. When considering outsourcing you must ask yourself if your in-house SEO person has the experience to put such a plan together and manage the resources necessary to carry it out to completion and ultimately succeed.
SEO Departmental Coordination
Holding multiple departments responsible and accountable for SEO can be a difficult task. Each department has their own agenda and responsibilities, in addition to the online marketing tasks. Hiring an agency makes placing accountability easy.
An in-house SEO team of one has an even greater challenge. Your workload will be huge and it will be very difficult to learn all of the disciplines required to plan, implement, and deliver results."Proving yourself" will take longer which could derail efforts before they have a chance to succeed.
Why Hire an Agency for Your SEO?
Hiring an SEO agency can be a tough decision. Maybe you have been burnt in the past or you think you have the in-house resources in place to succeed. Perhaps you think you can do all of the work yourself. Unfortunately implementing a successful SEO campaign is no small task.
Your core SEO team should have experience in:
- Your subject matter
- Copywriting
- SEO prioritization
- Site architecture
- Development
- Design and usability
- Project management
- Organic SEO
- PPC or paid advertising if your campaign includes this
- Link building
- Relevancy and expertise building
- Social Media Optimization
Search engine crawlers are smart. Google weighs over 200 variables in its search engine rankings algorithm. Crawlers look for any reason they can to not rank or index content (duplicate content, site errors, poorly written content, not enough value to visitors, users leaving your website without performing any action, etc). They want to provide an excellent user experience by providing the best search results. Only the best, most perfect companies rank at the top. You need to assess if your in-house team is capable of competing on this.
Competition in search engines has increased drastically over the past ten years. If you are in business and making money it is more than likely you have competition. A limited amount of search results appear on page one of a users search. As search engines provide better results, visits to page two of the results decrease. If you are not on page one you are missing opportunities. Your competition may be aware of this and implementing their own aggressive SEO plan. Are you willing to gamble the short and long-term success of your business on an inferior SEO campaign? Once you are established on the search engines it is harder to fall from grace. The opposite holds true - once you are seen as less relevant than your competition it is more difficult to out rank them.
Ready to Consider Hiring Professional SEO Consulting?
Perform an honest assessment of your in-house SEO team and if you feel that your in-house capabilities do not encompass this full skill set, you should look for outside assistance. Your online marketing is too important and you could lose too much time giving it a try only to, expend resources, lose money, and ultimately to fail six months later - eventually ending up bringing in outside resources. Your approach should be one of doing things right the first time.
Whether you don't have the complete team in house or just need outside assistance to ensure success, Atomic Design is here to help your in-house online marketing team.
If you have any questions on managing or assisting your in-house SEO team, or would like to explore partnering with an agency for all aspects of your project, contact a competent and experienced internet marketing provider - contact Atomic Design for an SEO consultation.