Who to choose to promote your site in search engines: an in-house specialist, agency or freelancer?
Regardless of what type of company yours belongs to, namely:
1) you have recently created a website and have not promoted it by SEO;
2) your site has been on the market for many years and is well optimized, and the task is to keep the existing volume of traffic with the appropriate quality indicators, and to attract new audiences;
3) or you are planning to create a new website and are ahead of the curve, looking into the future and planning to optimize your site from within, so that after the publication to promote it easier and faster ...
The question of choosing a reliable and professional performer in SEO is particularly important, because SEO promotion is a long-playing story, and the significant results of the work become visible not immediately, but after 3-4 months.
Promotion in search engines can be trusted to three types of professionals: staff SEO-schnik, agency (narrow or generalist) and freelancer. There are myths about each, which we'll talk about below.
From the height of 9 years of history in the market of digital promotion, we can both confirm and deny each of them, and also say that, as in any profession, both cool and completely untalented specialists are in any profession.
Before you choose a responsible specialist for search engine promotion, answer a few questions for yourself:
1. How big is your online resource?
(Do you have one or more sites? How many pages/categories of products or services do you need to promote now, and how will their number change over time? In fact - the desired rate of scaling).
2. How competitive is the niche you are working in? Here we take into account both the level of competition and the scale of competitors who have been in the market for a long time, and do not forget about the geographical aspect.
(conventionally, if you - the only point of auto service in a small town - it's one story, if you - a network of luxury clothing stores across the country - it's a completely different scale, and the level of competition - respectively).
3. What are the key objectives you want to solve by SEO-optimization of the site? (increase traffic, increase visibility, increase sales, enhance the company's reputation in the network, etc.).
4. What is the real budget you are ready to invest in search engine optimization now and in the long term.
5. Do you believe that search traffic is or can be key in terms of generating profits for your business?
The answers to the questions above will give you an understanding of how far your capabilities match your ambitions, and what is the minimum acceptable level of qualification of the performer of site promotion you need.
Choosing SEO or a team of specialists, remember the main thing - no one can give you a guarantee to get your site in the top, because search engine optimization - is an attempt to manipulate the ranking factors of search engines, which in the PS Google and Yandex - hundreds, and SEO experts actually affect a few dozen factors. In addition, these algorithms are regularly updated. Nevertheless, the time has passed when you could argue that SEO does not work. It works, proven by millions of successful cases.
Advantages and disadvantages of SEO-company / freelancer / in-house specialist.
1. The SEO-team in the agency.
Advantages:
- the team often has all the necessary specialists for prompt and high-quality work on the project: from seo-specialist, to copywriter, designer, programmer;
- the company is always more responsible for the quality of work performed, teams often have a system of internal quality control;
- companies have specialists of different levels of professionalism, and they all work on your project. What is a plus: routine and uncomplicated tasks are performed by assistant SEO specialists, which allows cool SEO specialists to focus on the implementation of strategically important aspects and do complex tasks faster;
- In teams, employees are growing professionally many times faster, as each individual specialist not only learns and implements some solutions, but also shares experiences with others, there is a certain synergy effect, when 1 + 1 = 3.
- Employees of an external company are not related to your business, which means they think more critically. A useful point here is the so-called "observer paradox" - when a specialist who is outside your internal system sees from the outside non-obvious, but extremely important points of growth for the business, and acts as an additional catalyst for progress.
Disadvantages:
- it may take a little longer to coordinate the intermediate stages of the work than it would if they were in-house specialists;
- For small companies, working with really strong SEO teams may not be available, due to the failure to pass the minimum budget threshold;
- Here, pay attention to who will communicate with you on the project after the start of cooperation. If the SEO specialist will both coordinate with you and make the website, it is likely that the pace of work will be extremely low. It is better if the company completely separates the functions of account management (project management, communication with clients, sales) and the work of technical specialists.
In-house specialist (in-house).
Advantages:
- in-house specialists are more immersed in your project in terms of the specifics of the business and peculiarities of working in the niche;
- faster coordination of intermediate stages.
Disadvantages:
- If you have a small project, the specialist will be understaffed and the profitability of keeping him in question;
- The same if the project is large - you will need a team that will not only need to "collect", but also to manage their performance, to train, to coordinate the work, etc. (add to that the cost of organizing jobs, equipment, etc.)
- Building a team from scratch can take several months, during which time a ready-made external team can already make progress in promoting your site.
Freelancer.
Advantages:
- Delegating website promotion to a freelancer may be more affordable than hiring an outside team or a full-time employee. However, this is not a fact, because not only can the freelancer be a student, but also a fully established specialist with a high level of competence and professionalism;
- Strong freelancers can also have a support team (copywriter, programmer, etc.), for the quality of whose work they are also responsible.
Disadvantages:
- Finding a professionally strong freelancer is more of a rare fluke than a regularly available option. In some cases, customers change several specialists and spend years until they find a truly professional performer;
- Most seoshniks in freelancing, still only deal with aspects of optimization, and will not solve for you the problems associated with the creation and placement of content, modifications on the site, which means that you produce a number of external specialists working on your project, with - completely unrelated to each other, which will greatly affect the quality of interaction between them, and on the quality of services provided to you, as a consequence;
- If a freelancer isn't even registered as an entrepreneur, and you don't have a contract between them, they can disappear from everyone's radar at some point. Alas.
Which option suits you better is up to you. We can offer you to get acquainted with us and find out how our competence can be useful for the development of your business.
Leave an application or contact us in any convenient way to get a free consultation on SEO promotion of the site in Google