Why You Should Hire An SEO Expert
Many business owners don’t realize just how vital search engine optimization (SEO) is to their website and how it affects the number of visitors they get from Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. For example, if your website isn’t optimized for the keywords people are searching for on those search engines, it’s unlikely that you’ll appear in search results on them at all. This means no traffic to your site, even if you have an incredibly well-designed website with very useful content!
1) SEO is Not Just Ranking on Page 1
SEO is implementing various activities to help your website rank on page 1 of Google. While rankings are part of SEO, they are not everything, and just focusing on getting your site to rank is an oversimplification. What matters is how many people you get to visit your site - a keyword ranking on page 1 is useless if no one clicks on it! If you’re looking for an expert who can implement strategies beyond just getting you ranked, then hiring an SEO consultant or agency can make sense for your business.
2) Understanding Your Audience
When hiring an SEO expert, it’s essential to do a bit of research on your own. Yes, you want to bring in someone who can increase your traffic and leads—but it’s equally important to know what type of content that audience is searching for. A local carpet cleaner isn’t going to get much business from people looking for SEO advice. And unless you plan on creating content around cleaning carpets (and if so, can we recommend those little robot vacuum cleaners?), it’s best to steer clear of that niche entirely. Do some research and make sure there’s a demand for your topic before investing in an expert.
3) Quality Backlinks Are Vital
A big part of ranking your website is getting other websites (called backlinks) to link back to yours. Of course, these days, some automated tools and services can quickly obtain these for you, but many of them have low-quality links that don’t help improve your website ranking. They also aren’t always trustworthy or safe, so it might be best to have a human do it for you. The easiest way to make sure you hire someone who can build high-quality links without breaking Google’s quality guidelines—and one who won’t scam you—is by hiring an SEO expert. This ensures all of your bases are covered because they will know exactly what kinds of sites your link needs to go on and how many quality backlinks would truly put you in contention with your competitors. Just remember: There’s no substitution for doing things right if you want to see results—so if you take anything away from this post, remember it’s worth investing in good SEO if one day you want to see traffic come through on search engines like Google & Bing.
4) Traffic is Crucial
Getting more traffic to your website is crucial for an effective search engine optimization campaign. If your site receives a lot of traffic, it will be ranked higher by Google in response to users’ queries. People looking for products or services on Google want to find what they’re looking for quickly, so if you can land higher up in organic searches, you’ll have a better chance of getting more click-throughs than your competitors. It may seem like it takes forever to rank highly in search engines, but that isn’t always true; studies show that once your site starts getting a substantial amount of backlinks and good natural search traffic over time, rankings tend to increase exponentially.
5) The Difference Between White Hat and Black Hat SEO
The Distinction Between White Hat and Black Hat SEO. According to Wikipedia, black hat SEO refers to practices performed by search engine optimization (SEO) professionals that involve deception and are disapproved of by search engines. Thus, it involves techniques that could result in site penalties or get your site banned from SERPs altogether. These are practices that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and should never be used if you want to see your site succeed in organic search results over time. They include keyword stuffing, doorway pages, excessive interlinking between sites you control (thereby potentially creating a spammy link profile), selling links for a profit without disclosure, as well as many other questionable techniques.
In contrast, white hat SEO refers to optimizing your website that doesn’t violate any search engine guidelines or terms of service. It doesn’t mean those methods won’t work; they just aren’t going to cause long-term damage or put you at risk. At its core, white hat SEO is about helping search engines find quality content on websites rather than tricking them into ranking higher with black-hat strategies such as keyword stuffing and hidden text. The Internet is becoming less forgiving every day, and one small mistake could ruin months of hard work; make sure that never happens by using a professional who uses only white hat techniques.
Should I Learn SEO or Hire an Expert?
SEO is a tricky beast. On the one hand, you don’t want to hire someone to do something you can learn independently. But hiring an expert will save you a lot of time and money if you’re not versed in SEO best practices. A good rule of thumb: any time there’s a money component involved with your work, it’s better to hire an expert than risk making costly mistakes. Of course, when it comes to ranking your site in search engines and bringing in traffic from users who may or may not spend money, there is no cookie-cutter approach to these things – every single website is different, so what works for one person might not work for another. If you feel like trying to figure out how to boost your website’s visibility on your own but are having trouble moving forward, it might be worth looking into hiring an expert. How many years of SEO experience do they have? Do they use black hat techniques that may hurt your company? Are they up to date on the latest SEO practices? What are their rates? These are just some of the questions that can help inform whether or not working with a particular expert makes sense for you as a client.