While the many parts that make up an SEO campaign may seem easy enough to do and implement on your own individually, if you add them all up it amounts to a lot of work. Many businesses just don’t have the time to learn all of the intricate ins and outs of the industry in order to carry out a useful campaign. They also don’t have the resources to hire an in-house SEO person to handle it all. The best option in this case is to hire an SEO company to do the bulk of the work for you, but don’t think that you can just sign a contract and disappear. The SEO client remains and integral part of the process. In order for the SEO client/SEO company partnership to work, an SEO company needs 4 things from their clients:
Open Lines of Communication
An SEO company should be viewed as a partner and should be “kept in the loop” regarding internal business decisions that may have SEO implications. If you are launching a new product or forming a strategic partnership with another company, this is all important information that should be passed along. Keeping your SEO partner in the dark means that optimization and link building opportunities may be missed. For example, a new product means that new pages added to the site need to be optimized, and a strategic partnership is information that should be shared via press release, blog posts, and social media.
Content
Without content, you have no SEO campaign. SEO content is much more than your website content. In order to build links and establish trust amongst the search engines and target audience members it’s necessary to create blog posts, articles, press releases, videos, blog comments, social media profiles and posts, and local and industry profiles. An SEO company can do their best to understand your business, but you are really the one that knows it best. Provide your SEO company with articles, blog posts, etc. on a regular basis. Or, at least provide them with topics and bullet points so that SEO copywriters can handle it for you.
Trust
Most likely you don’t pick an SEO company by pulling a name out of a hat. You probably did some in depth research and found a company that you feel most comfortable with. Great, now trust them to do their job! While communication is important, there is no reason to call or email everyday to check in on the status of a project. In addition, take every recommendation made by your SEO partner into consideration. Don’t just dismiss it because you think that it won’t work for your business. The SEO company is the expert, after all!
Patience
SEO results won’t come overnight. In fact, it can take many months before you start seeing results. That doesn’t mean that the SEO company doesn’t know what they are doing. It probably means that they do know what they are doing! An SEO company that promises results within a certain timeframe is a fraud. The search engines are competitive places. It takes awhile to build up trust and improve a search engine results page presence.
About the Author:
Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing, an SEO firm based in Boston, MA. He also posts daily on his blog, SEO Journal. For more information please call 781-999-1222 or visit http://www.brickmarketing.com.