Is SEO worth paying for?
One of the most common questions that people who contact SEO companies ask is if SEO is worth paying for? Search engine optimization is a process in which you manipulate aspects of a website or web page in order to make it be presented higher on search engines. Many people who are in business for themselves will consider doing these things on their own, because they probably have more time than extra money with which to pay a professional to do it for them. While there are essentially no aspects of professional SEO that you could not perform for your own website, the real question is if you have enough time and talent to achieve the goal of first-page rankings, or if it is simply better to pay someone with experience to do it. This is very much like trying to install your own tile or paint your own house, all the tools are readily available for anyone who wants to invest in them. The actual work involved takes time to do, and as long as you can put in that time there is no reason why you would not be able to make headway. The real question beyond if you have the time is if you have the ability to compete with professional SEO companies to outrank the websites they are working on. Keep in mind that in competitive industries, there are probably SEO companies working on the websites that are your competition. You will need to do a better job than them in order to outrank your competitors.
What do I need to do for good SEO?
SEO is a process that involves relatively simple concepts. In order to “do SEO” for a website, you first must make the website friendly for Google to understand the content. This will mean creating a website that loads as fast as possible and displays correctly on different types of devices. This can be achieved relatively easily using WordPress or another content management system and a well designed theme. Plugins can provide the necessary functionality. You then need to think about only a few different aspects of the site for each individual page. You will need to make sure that images on each page are not so big that they slow down the load times. You will also need to pay attention that the titles and descriptions of the page are specific and very descriptive for that individual page’s subject. This is all you really need to concentrate on with regards to the “code” part of the website. Now you can move on to the “content” part of the project, which is the majority of SEO work. You will need to write content for each page of the site that answers the questions that potential customers ask, and does so better than every other website online in your area. Google ranks web pages by considering how well they provide information that people are looking for. Make sure you provide all of the information necessary to answer the questions without being too wordy or going off on tangents. Each page should be set up to answer a question.
How much content do I need to do?
Now that you understand that “doing SEO” is primarily about writing answers to questions that your customers may ask, you can get to work doing it. Ask yourself what questions your customers have asked, or what confuses them about your products. Look at what other websites are writing about with regards to this topic. Write at least 500 words about the topic and try to cover all of the elements of the answer in that amount, but if you need more to answer the questions thoroughly then do so. Post the content to your website and then provide links from that content to other pieces of content that further answer specific questions that arise from this topic, the way Wikipedia does. Post all this interlinked content to your website, and then write the same kinds of articles and post them on other websites linking back to yours. This is how SEO is done on a month to month basis. The amount of content you will need to post to gain higher rankings will depend on how well received it is by Google, and how much they like the same types of content on your competitor’s websites. The best content with good links going to it get the high rankings, and everything else falls below it on the Google listing. Only the first six results on Google will provide any clickthrough traffic to your website, so do this over and over again until you rank in those positions. Overtaking competition on the first page is far harder than overtaking competition on anything beyond page two, so get ready to write a lot. Our typical SEO programs involve writing about 10 articles (500 words minimum) every month for a single website. We assume each article will take about an hour do complete and post. This is what you are paying us to do.
Conclusion
The question of “is SEO worth paying for” can only be answered by you individually, depending if you can do the work yourself or not. If your industry is mildly competitive, you can expect to write a minimum of about five articles every month. How long these articles will take to do depends on how good a writer you are. Their success at achieving the goal of higher rankings depends on how good a writer you are. You can expect to keep repeating this process for as long as you are in business, because rankings rarely stay fixed. As soon as the competition realizes you are making money because of your rankings, you can bet they are going to do the same for themselves. Is it worth paying someone to do SEO for your site? Only you can answer that question.
