As a matter of fact why bother with SEO in general, let alone a company that claims to specialize in providing search engine optimization services?
Website or business owners can do it themselves and a few are able to achieve top results without any help from a “professional”. This does not even take into account the nature of the beast involved with any such effort. Google is a Gorilla, tremendously powerful yet uncompromising. A person or company can spend three years working on a website only to see it disappear from the search engine rankings in one fell swoop. So why bother with SEO or for that matter any form of search engine marketing?
As of late I find myself asking this question repeatedly. You can spend countless hours studying and reading about Google’s methods, how to achieve top search rankings, but what does that accomplish? At the end of the day we are all subject to the mercy of the 5,000 pound Gorilla that is Google. Or are we?
I consider this post as much a life piece as one about search engine marketing. Everybody knows the common tools and ideas of the trade: Meta tags, header tags, title tags, relevant links, do not use link farms, avoid duplicate content…The list runs on and on. When all is said and done almost everyone knows Google’s webmaster guidelines and what should be done.
This brings us to the execution of commonly understood basics. Knowing what one should do and actually doing it are two extremely different things. Everybody knows that they should not speed while driving. How many people actually obey the posted speed limits religiously? I’ve discovered that knowing SEO strategies is only one piece of the pie. A much larger piece is acting upon that knowledge.
So back to the original question, why Bother with an SEO Company? The simple answer is that most people should not. Many people actually can do the work on their own and do so successfully– yes this is true even though only a few owner’s of SEM companies will admit that. Peace of mind along with a better chance of success is the best answer that I can come up with.
People hire SEO companies often for the same reasons they hire attorneys. They need a trusted advisor who is engrossed in the industry on a daily basis. If something changes on the search engine landscape they want to know about it. Therefore I conclude the many times a firm is hired partly for an increased level of comfort and partially for the added expertise that can be derived from a company or person experienced in search engine optimization.
Will a lawyer win every case? Absolutely not. Will an SEO company succeed with every project? Also absolutely not. Is my company simply the internet marketing version of a law firm? More in more I find myself answering with a disheartening and resonating “Yes”. Still I am only one person in a sea of billions. I place this post in hopes of hearing the thoughts of others. Are my thoughts without merit? Do you believe an SEO company can provide benefits and if so what? Or am I simply another person trying to figure out his purpose in life? I open myself and this post to the most critical forum of all – the public.
Brent Yorzinski founded the SEO Company Agilis Marketing. He has successfully assisted countless companies achieve top search results on the other major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
