Optimizing your website for search can get you a lot of new search traffic, and possibly a lot of new customers, too. But while you can try to do search engine optimization (SEO) yourself, it’s not always an easy thing to do. Performing your own keyword research and building your own backlinks might be one thing, but do you know how to implement schemas and write effective meta descriptions? Are you following news in the SEO industry to know when search engine algorithm updates are incoming?
If you’re trying to do SEO yourself, you’re bound to miss something. It’s often worth hiring an SEO professional for your small business website, especially if you’re an SEO amateur yourself or you’re having issues with your website that need a professional touch, like a sudden, unexplained drop in organic traffic or even a manual action. Here are the times when it’s worth hiring an SEO agency for your small business.
Organic Traffic to Your Website Has Dropped
If your website was getting plenty of organic traffic from search but now it’s not, you might need the help of a professional Phoenix SEO company to help you find out why. A sudden drop in traffic could be due to any number of issues. It could be a seasonal trend, a technical problem, or a change to the algorithm sites use to rank pages. In most cases, a professional will be able to find the problem and fix it, restoring your organic search traffic, but it might take a professional eye to suss out the problem in the first place.
You’re Not Getting Any Search Traffic to Begin With
Or maybe you’re not suffering from a drop in traffic so much as your site never got much traffic to begin with. All your efforts to engage your customers with a high-quality website are for naught if no one is visiting it. Low traffic can signal to search engines that your content isn’t valuable to users, so it can be difficult or impossible to rank high in search engine return pages (SERPs) when you’re getting very little traffic to your site. An SEO can help you get more traffic and source better leads.
You Are Migrating to a New CMS or Doing a Site Redesign
Anytime you make large changes to your site, you should consult with a professional SEO agency to make sure those changes aren’t going to harm your SERP rankings. A change of CMS platform, URL, domain, layout, or site structure can have a huge effect on your SERP rankings, and those aren’t the only kinds of changes that can impact your SERP rankings.
Your SEO Strategy Isn’t Working
If your SEO strategy isn’t working the way you hoped it would, it’s time to bring in a professional SEO expert. Even if you’re already working with an SEO expert, you may want to consider getting a second opinion if your SEO strategy still isn’t having the results you would have liked. Or maybe you’re just unhappy with your current strategy – tired of burning the midnight oil to do SEO yourself, or too busy to maintain a strategy that actually works quite well. These are all good reasons to call in a pro.
You Don’t Have the Staffing Resources In-House
It takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to do SEO properly, and not a lot of small businesses have that kind of expertise in-house. You might only have one marketing person, who is busy with email campaigns, lead generation, social media, copywriting, landing page creation, and other marketing tasks, and doesn’t have the time for SEO. Maybe no one at your organization has the right skill set or the time to implement it. That’s when it’s time to hire an SEO agency.
You Need to Reverse a Manual Action
A manual action means that Google has reviewed your site and found that it runs afoul of Google’s policies against spam or that it has attempted to manipulate the search rankings with black hat practices. To reverse a manual action, you’re going to have to repair all the issues with your site, then you’ll have to persuade Google that you plan to use white hat practices from now on. This is difficult to do on your own, and it’s going to be especially difficult to do on your own if you caused the manual action through your own lack of knowledge of SEO best practices. When things have gone this far, it’s best to get some professional help.
Is it worth hiring an SEO agency for your small business? Often, the answer is yes. SEO takes a lot of skill and a lot of time to do right. You’re usually much better off hiring someone if you can afford it. Take the pressure off yourself and your staff, and hire an SEO agency today.
