The world of search engine optimisation (SEO) is split on whether you should hire professionals or do the job yourself. We ask the question: is it worth paying for an SEO agency to boost your ecommerce website’s rankings online?
Just as in any other industry, there are very good and very bad SEO agencies. The main sign of a good SEO agency is that it only engages in white hat SEO techniques.
One thing is clear: having a search engine optimisation plan in place is essential for every ecommerce business. Because the ecommerce industry relies heavily on search for new customers and growing business, where your site ranks is important.
The truth is that SEO can be done in house: it isn’t a dark art that requires insider knowledge of Google, but it does require dedication and a long-term strategy.
Where an agency can help is in their expertise and talent. Many growing ecommerce sites simply don’t have the time to dedicate themselves to proper SEO development. Yet, because it is such an important part of your marketing mix, you cannot afford to ignore it.
There are certain things that you can do before hiring an agency:
* Keywords: ensure that you have a list of keywords for your site, and use these (where relevant) over and over on your site.
* Copy: keep your website copy tight and fresh. Ensure you update your ecommerce site as often as possible with blogs, new products, new pages and categories, testimonials, etc.
SEO agencies are best placed for the next phase of improving your SEO, where it becomes important to build up the number of back links to your website.
Back links are vital as they give your website credibility. The more back links you have from strong sources (such as news outlets, academia and reputable/popular websites), the more “Google juice” your site will receive.
There are two techniques for this. First, the organic way, where your site and its content sells itself – the copy you write and the products you have on your website are so good that others will link back to you. You can achieve this through a good PR strategy, in which journalists link to your website in online articles, or through a good social media strategy, where the more you share through Twitter, Facebook, etc, the more people will link back to you.
The second main technique is where an SEO agency can help, encouraging many sites to link to you independently. Again, unique content is important for this, which you can help provide in advance.
There are no magic bullets for SEO, however. If you decide to hire an agency and want to see drastic results, budget for the agency to work for you for six months to a year.
The good news is that once the work has been done and you have achieved the ranking you desire, you can then stop using the agency and turn on cruise control, scaling back the amount of SEO work you have to do. Keeping a top ranking once you’re there organically is much easier than getting there in the first place.
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