Introduction

Granted, we do run an seo agency, so you might say, that we are bound to say that you should start investing as soon as possible in search engine optimisation. However, there’s a good reason to start investing today, and not to delay.

The reason for that is simple, search engine optimisation, is a bit like building a wall, if your competitors are allowed to build their wall for longer, they will simply have a much higher wall, and your business will need to scale that wall, if your business is to rank higher on Google.

So, businesses that are investing today, or let’s say have invested for the last 10 years, they have a head start over a business that is delaying investing in search engine optimisation.

However, here’s where things get a little bit more complicated, some agencies do simply brilliant job, and the work is simply top quality, this can obviously help improve your businesses sales, however you can also hire agencies, well which might not do such a good job on improving your seo, they might actually put your businesses search engine optimisation in reverse, or worse land your business a penalty, such as incurring a Google Penguin penalty.

So, for the reasons of simplicity, we are just going to presume in this article that we are talking about quality search engine optimisation, and our best advice is, don’t pick an agency which offers you low quality seo work, as this will actually damage your businesses search engine optimisation, and not improve it.

 

 

Find an agency that you’re happy to work with

Here’s one of our top tips, hiring a search engine optimisation agency, is very different from hiring let’s say a builder.

If you don’t like the builder’s attitude, well, it doesn’t really matter, as long as they do a good job, because you don’t have to work with them over the long term.

However, with search engine optimisation, well, this is a whole different story, because this type of marketing does require long-term investment, often most businesses pay every single month for seo, and do so for a very long period of time. For example, we’ve got customers that have been with us for years.

So, the first thing is find a agency that you are really happy to work with, you must find a business, that you want to work with over the long run.

And here’s the other thing, the marketing agency has to work well with you as well, so therefore it’s like forming a partnership.

If the marketing agency doesn’t work well with the client, or the client doesn’t work well with the agency, well, it’s not going to work.

So, why not even ask the directors of the marketing agency, out for a beer, or a meal, to get a real sense of if you can work with them or not, you might find that you don’t like their personality, therefore we wouldn’t recommend working with that agency, that’s because you have to work well together over the long term.

So, it’s all well and good, rocking up at a marketing agency, and them putting together a presentation to try and impress you, to gain new business, and it’s important to sit through and listen to what they have to say.

However, we would recommend also, going out with the directors of the agency, and have a drink or meal, and work out whether you can really work that agency or not.

 

 

 

Make sure that you are in it for the long term

Now, what some businesses do is they hire an agency, but they sometimes don’t have the marketing budget available to bridge from going from starting to invest in the search engine optimisation, through to the point where the seo is actually generating sale.

Now, what you have to appreciate is, that sometimes it can take say 12 months sometimes before the seo company can start to generate more sales for their client, that’s in highly competitive business sectors.

The reason for this is if there are a lot of businesses that are also investing in search engine optimisation within your business sector, then these need to be overtaken, and to do that, well your businesses standard of search engine optimisation needs to be deemed as being stronger. For your seo to be deemed stronger, then you need to have stronger seo than your competitors, if your competitors have been investing for the last let’s say 10 years, well needless to say there is a huge mountain that your company needs to climb in order to beat the standard of your competitors seo.

Therefore, this is why search engine optimisation is a long-term process, and the company needs to make sure that they have the marketing budget in place to bridge the gap, between starting to invest in seo and to the point where the seo company can start to generate more sales for their client.

Of course, this differs from business sector to business sector, and a good seo consultant might be able to get the business on the first page of Google in that business sector, which is low competition business sector, in say  less than six months, however for highly competitive business sectors, let’s say the car insurance industry, then a might be well over 12 months before you start to see any results.

 

 

Reap the results

This is another important point, that is if search engine optimisation is done right (white hat), then it can sometimes have a dramatic effect on some businesses, in terms of it could help you generate a lot more sales.

This is another reason why you shouldn’t delay investing in search engine optimisation, because if you’re not investing, it’s more than likely that one or many of your competitors are investing right now.

And because of this, if you’re not investing, that is you’re not paying a good seo consultant or agency to improve your own search engine optimisation, then you could be handing a large competitive advantage to many of your competitors.

What we mean by handing a large competitive advantage your competitors is, if you’re not investing in seo, then they might be, that your competitors might be obtaining a huge amount of sales, which you could have part of, that’s if you were to invest in this form of marketing also.

Again, how successful your businesses search engine optimisation is, really does boil down to the quality of the work the seo consultant or the agency offers.