I know what you are thinking and going through. I was in your position eight years ago – looking for a decent SEO marketing company to get my advertising business to the next level. Truth is, I was taken for a ride badly by an outfit in the US who promised an awful lot and delivered very little. In the end, I did it all myself and the site now enjoys excellent organic search positions for terms like ‘online advertising’ ‘magazine advertising’ ‘newspaper advertising’ to name a few. It was a big lesson for me and one that put my business back about 3 months before launch.
Keep It Simple And Move Forward
As someone who wants to learn about SEO, you just need to do the basic things well and often. I actually liken this whole SEO business to sport and I’ll use the current rugby world cup (going on in New Zealand at the time of writing) as a good example.
Being English (and a keen supporter of the English team) I watched the pool stage match between England and Georgia today. It was a decent game and England won it quite convincingly in the end. However, they tried to complicate things early on and lost momentum. They tried to do too many fancy things and played a scrappy game that the Georgian team wanted. This put them on the back foot a bit in the first half until they found their game later on. My point to this is that rugby is a simple game. If you keep it simple and do these simple things well and often then you will build momentum and ultimately give yourselves the best chance of success.. It is the same with SEO.
There are a number of fundamental moves and game plays that you need to do well and often to succeed. You should keep your eye on the ball and keep moving forward at all times. Do the simple things well and it will fall into place. If you choose to do this yourself then you have a bit of work to do. You need to read up on the subject and make sure that you implement all of the main points mentioned on this blog – you then need to keep doing it!
If you choose to take on a SEO marketing company, then you need to make sure that they understand your business. This will ensure that they move and communicate in the right channels. This will save considerable time and get your website moving in the right direction. They should also be responsible for adopting above board (or what we call white hat) techniques to boost your SEO and to create a good internal and external plan for you. This involves a fair bit of work on your own site as well as building relationships to build link popularity off it.
This structured and professional approach to SEO is the difference between success and failure. I did it the hard way to start – you don’t have to!