By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2010-12-27 16:37:35 | Word Count: 664
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an extremely difficult and expensive process. There are few companies who can afford to do SEO in-house. An average SEO professional will cost around $60,000 annually. And, it’s not a job that only one person can do, so you’ll have to hire at least 3 people to get the job done effectively. Now you’re up to $180,000 a year. And that cost doesn’t even include a web designer, or a programmer. You’ve just easily exceeded $200,000 a year on SEO. So, what can you do?
First, you should not just ignore this issue. SEO is a vital part of driving traffic and leads to your website. Without those things, your site is dead in the water. So, let’s take a more in depth look at SEO.
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There are four main components to a successful SEO strategy.
* Onsite Optimization is crucial for driving traffic to your site and keeping it there. Your content needs to be targeted towards your services or products and the settings on your site should reflect this relevance. Additionally htaccess settings, meta information and 301 redirects are all essential parts of on-site optimization and all require extensive attention.
* Offsite Optimization takes your SEO campaign past website design and implementation. It’s just not enough to have a visually appealing site that is fully optimized. Really, what good is it if no one goes to it? That’s where off-site optimization comes in. Social media, affiliate marketing, blogging and syndication increase your relevant backlinks which are crucial to driving traffic to your site as well as increasing popularity.
* Conversion Optimization involves analyzing your data, and converting it into information that can be used to improve your SEO strategy. For example, if you can see that you have a lot of traffic visiting your site, but no leads being generated, you may have a high “bounce rate” (or a lot of people abandoning you). Conversion optimization will help you to convert traffic to leads, and leads to clients.
* Keyword Research is another vital piece of the SEO pie. Without proper and relevant keywords you’re not going to attract anyone. It’s important to look at what your target group of users is searching for, and then provide them with that content. This effectively fills a need and drives traffic to your site.
So, now that you know how complex and multi faceted properly executed SEO can be, what do you do? If your company has an internal IT department, consider training some of them on SEO. You’re already paying their salaries, so that will save you the overhead costs of hiring 5 or 6 new people to do the job.
Optimum7 is well equipped to address these needs. We have staff that are experts in SEO and are ready to train your existing employees so that you can have a successful in house SEO strategy. We have over 10 years of experience in the SEO field, so let our knowledge work for you. Contact us today! You can call us at 1-800-736-9618.
