Why You Shouldn’t Look for Your Design and SEO Service in the Same Place

Your child wakes in the middle of the night with a high fever, nausea and vomiting. Do you call your dentist? No! You call the pediatrician or visit the emergency room. Even though the dentist is a medical professional, he doesn’t have the training necessary to diagnose and treat a child’s illness.

Similarly, you may not want to use a web design professional to manage your website’s search engine marketing. Why? Because the skills and training needed to do an amazing design aren’t the same ones required to analyze page content, follow search engine best practices and generate leads.

But for many small business owners, the idea of an “all-in-one” shop is vastly appealing. If you work with just one firm to handle all your internet marketing needs, from design to email to SEO, it’s less hassle. The problem is that a small “all-in-one” vendor likely lacks all the skills necessary to deliver outstanding results in all areas. You may have a great designer but a lousy SEO provider, and you’re not ranking like you could if you employed experts in their fields for both.

3 Reasons You Need a Separate SEO Provider From Your Web Designer

1. SEO is constantly changing. It can be hard to keep up with the changes in web design, but it’s pretty near impossible for one person or a small firm to stay on top of new developments in two significant areas. A designer may be using outdated techniques that are actually hurting your rankings.
2. Two heads are better than one. In an ideal world, your web designer and SEO provider will work closely together, but have two different perspectives and abilities to add value. As well, each has some degree of oversight from the other, so it’s harder to make a giant mistake that will impact your site.
3. Doing it right takes time. Someone who is providing full-time web design services may not also have enough time to do full-time SEO work. Unless you’re the only client — or one of just a few — you may not get the time and attention you deserve. And if a single provider is able to devote enough attention to you, they may have to charge more to make that business model work for them.

How to Find the Right SEO Provider For Your Small Business

When you’re looking for a top-notch SEO provider, you want to find a firm who can provide value. And while good SEO takes time, you want to feel like your SEO provider is partnering with you to deliver results. Look for a search expert who:

• Works well with others. Your SEO provider will have to work closely with your web designer and perhaps coordinate with other marketing services you use.
• Is willing to answer your questions. Any provider who says something like, “Oh, it’s too technical” when you ask them about their methods might legitimately not want to bore you, but in many cases, it’s because they don’t know.
• Helps you develop goals for your search marketing. Only by having goals do you know if you’re getting value by meeting those objectives. A poor SEO doesn’t want benchmarks to be measured by, while a good one seeks measurements to attain.
• Reports back to you regularly (monthly or quarterly) with information about how your search marketing is progressing and what they’re doing.

A good online marketing provider will also be able to integrate your efforts in social media marketing and pay-per-click advertising with the work they do. Although you may end up needing experts in different areas to have a robust and well-performing website that generates leads and sales, the effort will be well worth the benefits.

Contact the SEO Professionals today for a FREE consultation on how we can improve your search engine rankings. We’re happy to answer all your questions and work with others on your marketing team.