One of the most important keys to an online business is digital marketing or search engine optimization (SEO). You might understand the basic of SEO, but do you know how to get the best results that you need for your business to be seen and to be successful? Most business owners have no clue where to start and that is why it is a good idea to leave this up to the professionals.

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What Exactly is SEO?

If you were to ask several marketing experts what SEO is, they will all give you a different answer. SEO is a process where you use specific techniques to increase your website’s online presence and reputation. The aim of this is to raise the ranking of your website on the search engines. SEO includes these various methods:

• Link building

• Branding and reputation management

• Site mapping

• Creation of metadata

• Image tagging

• URL structuring

• Web design

• Mobile friendly design

• Keyword research

The process of implementing all these key points can take many years to comprehend and master. This is time that most businesses do not have because they need to see results now. So why is SEO so important?

Web sites that rank higher receive more traffic. If your website is not on the first page, your site will probably not be seen by the customers that you are looking to connect with. When you search for something on Google, do you look at the items on the first page or do you go to page 3?

Should you do Your own SEO?

DIY SEO is a touchy subject. There are so many different things that you need to understand about SEO before you get started. It is truly a front-end heavy learning experience. By the time that you know all that there is to know about SEO, you may have missed out on a lot of opportunities for sales.

If you do not do all the steps correctly, you may not get a second chance to get it right. People are turning to the search engines for help to find the things they need the most and if your site is not where it should be in the search engines, you are missing out on your target market.

Can you afford to spend all your time learning how to do SEO correctly while your business is not being conducted? The short answer is no. You are a business owner, and you need customers, and you need them now. You cannot attract customers to your site if it is not being seen.

Hiring an SEO Specialist

Hiring a full-service SEO specialist is an investment in your business. When you have a business expense, it is a write-off for you. It can seem like a lot of money to spend but the results are worth it. Why?

• Time is Money. If you are spending all your business workday in trying to learn SEO and figure out what needs to be done for your business, you are not doing business. Hiring an SEO Specialist will ensure that all the important things are done for your website and that you will draw your target customers to your offers.

• Bad SEO is as Good as no SEO. If you have no idea how to do SEO, you can eliminate your chances of your site ranking. If you do not know how to do SEO correctly, your site may be penalized. Some examples are overusing keywords (“keyword stuffing”), using content from other websites, without changing it in any way (“content scraping”) or hiding links in your text (“cloaking”). When you hire an SEO specialist, they will not only not use any of these methods, but they will also ensure that your site is built up the right way.

• Enjoy Long Term Success. When you find the right SEO specialist, they will work with you to ensure that your business is set up correctly. They can work with you for years to come so that your site is ready for every change to rules and algorithms that come along.

• Save Money. When you hire someone outside of your business to take care of your SEO you may think that it is expensive, but you are hiring a company that will work with you to provide you with only the services that you need. The services that are provided to you are customized to your specific needs. Instead of having to hire several employees to take care of this work for you, you just hire a specialist that only does this type of work for a living.

• Gain Insight into Your Market. Your SEO specialist will talk to you about how you fit into your market. They can help you to understand this by conducting research into your market including your business website’s performance and what your competitors are doing. Once you have this insight, it can help you to beat your competitors and win over new customers while doing it.

• No Need to Keep up With Changes. SEO changes often, usually several times a year. Just keeping up with all those changes is a full-time job. Your SEO specialist keeps up with all these trends so that you do not have to.

• Link Building. Your SEO specialist understands the importance of building the right links to your site. If you want to be an authority in your niche, then you need to build that authority through links because that is how Google understands the importance of your business. When your content has links to likeminded sites and vice versa, it helps to build your authority and rank.

• Lead Generation. You need an SEO campaign that generates sales. Proper SEO will strengthen your sales funnel and drive customers through the funnel which will build up your customer base. An SEO specialist can direct customers to move through your sales funnel in an organic manner that does not feel forced to your customers.

There are many aspects to building your business we page and sales funnels. It is crucial that these are done correctly. If SEO is not done right, it can damage your business and your reputation. While you may think that you are saving money by not hiring an SEO specialist, the truth is that you are costing yourself money by not having your website set up correctly. The value is in the work that an experienced SEO specialist can do to build your site the right way the first time.