Industry guru Dave Taylor offers tech support on technical and business topics, including iPhone, iPod, Microsoft Windows, Sony PSP, cellphones, online advertising, CSS, Web design, business, Unix, Linux, SEO, Mac OS X, and shell script programming.     


Should I optimize my site for search engine SEO?

I realize you're going to have a bit of a biased opinion given that you wrote a book on how to optimize your site for Google, but I keep getting offers from third party agencies and can't decide: should I hire someone to optimize my site, or do it myself?


Dave's Answer:

I'll tell ya what, I'll pull myself out of this discussion and instead quote some of the excellent market analysis that's included in Marketing Sherpa's brand new Search Marketing Benchmark Guide. Here's what they suggest, based on their extensive research:

The big marketing debate over SEO has never been whether or not to do it. It's self-evident that you'd want your site to appear near the top of free rankings for keywords important to your brand. Instead, the debate has always been whether to outsource or handle SEO in-house.

According to this year's revenues, the keep-SEO-in-house school of thought is winning. This is amply borne out when we examine the actual percent of total search marketers who run SEO in-house. Last year that percent was about 74% and this year it's ... 74%.

Any growth in the SEO outsourcing industry has mainly come from current accounts getting larger and from general overall growth in search marketing as a whole.

(Worth noting: we found nearly the same to be true for the paid search advertising (PPC) agencies as well. There, 73% of potential clients choose to keep campaigns in-house.)

If you're a client-side marketer, this data points to a significant ongoing competitive opportunity for your online presence. According to our 2005 data, marketers who outsourced SEO saw a 110% lift in overall site traffic within six months, whereas marketers who handled SEO in-house saw a 73% lift.

In short, if you hire an expert for SEO, you tend to get significantly better results. (Note: we do not offer SEO services, nor accept advertising from SEO firms. As a research firm, we have no reason - beyond the data - to be making this recommendation.)

Here's an interesting graph about keyword buying trends to consider:

Keyword buying trends

Why is keyword growth slowing for B-to-C? Two factors are at least in part responsible - the first being that cost per click continues to rise for many markets.

The days of easy find five-cent clicks are for the most part behind us. In addition, the trend in 2005 was to expand search success by doing a "landgrab," reaching out to every conceivable keyword to see what would stick.

However, these massive campaigns are not as competitive anymore - anyone with the budget can do them with easy-to-use keyword expansion tools provided free of charge by search engine.

Plus, we have plenty of anecdotal evidence revealing that experienced search marketers are refocusing on doing the best job possible with the most important keywords for their brands. They feel it's better to do an extremely good job of copywriting, bid management and landing page conversion optimization with fewer search terms than a slightly more slapdash job with more terms.

The Search Marketing Benchmark Report has tons of information packed into its 262 pages if you really need to know about this subject, including eyetracking maps, charts and search marketing budgets and results for over 3,900 marketing professionals. And, yes, it's an affiliate link too. Thanks for letting us keep the digital lights on!

More Useful Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Articles:
✔   How do I restructure my Wordpress blog without losing SEO?
I have a wordpress blog that was using categories in the url structure like this: /category_name/post_name/ Then I had read somewhere that if...
✔   Change in Web site navigation drops PageRank to zero?
We changed our website recently and also changed the menus on it so some of our pages have a different path now. For...
✔   How do I implement add rel=author for Google serps?
I notice that sometimes on the Google search results that the author of the article is displayed next to the match in the...
✔   Add a new site to my Google Webmaster Tools account?
Thanks for your earlier blog entry about how to verify my account with Google Webmaster Tools! Now I want to add an additional...
✔   How do I verify my site with Google Webmaster Tools?
I've heard that one of the best ways to improve my Google search ranking is to fix anything that's marked as incorrect in...

Let's stay in touch!
Sign up for my weekly AskDaveTaylor Newsletter and you'll receive even more tech and gadget help right to your inbox, along with exclusive news and industry updates. It's good stuff. I promise!
    Enter your name: and your email addr:  





Categorized: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)   (Article 6903, Written by )
Tagged: google, marketing sherpa, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo
Previous: Is Wibree really a replacement for Bluetooth?
Next: How do I set up an affiliate program for my software program?




Reader Comments To Date: 1

MEHAK MALIK said, on July 8, 2011 5:45 AM:

Hi there, I located your internet site via Google even though looking for a related topic, your internet site came up, it looks excellent. I’ve bookmarked it in my google bookmarks.

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











I will never send you any unsolicited email. Ever.






Check This Out Too...

 
Look for Answers
Need Help? Ask Dave Taylor!


Follow Me on Pinterest

Find Me on Google+
ADT on G+
© 2002 - 2013 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site. Further, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site. My lawyer says "Thanks".
"Ask Dave Taylor®" is a registered trademark of Intuitive Systems, LLC.