Is paying an SEO company worth it?

We get asked this all the time, people are unsure of the real tangible benefits of getting someone like a third party in for their SEO and to work it out for them.

In our fast paced digital world, businesses of all sizes and focuses want to enhance their online presence and attract potential customers with efficiency. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into the picture, offering a strategic approach to optimize websites for better visibility and higher rankings on search engine results pages.

However, despite the proven importance of and the significant focus on SEO by leading marketing experts, a prevailing notion persists that SEO services are overpriced and are charging you for things you can do yourself.

The purpose of this blog post is to examine all sides of hiring an SEO company and list out the benefits and considerations of that decision, as well as to look at the alternative DIY options.

By exploring these aspects, businesses can make informed decisions about whether investing in professional SEO services aligns with their objectives and resources.

One of the main advantages that partnering with an SEO company can provide is the access to expertise.

In order to work with a reputable SEO company a person should have a skillset and expertise built up over months, years, or even decades. This ‘on the ground’ experience of working within the complexities of the SEO world, search engine rules, algorithm updates, and watching the industry develop from a generally unknown ‘wild west’ of keyword stuffing and comment spam into the nuanced and cutting edge industry it is today is innately valuable.

While we’re certainly not saying that those new to the industry can’t be good at their job, experience in the world is a real advantage.

With smaller businesses it is often the time saved that is one of the biggest advantages.

All business owners know how much their time is in demand, and many underestimate exactly how much time is needed to make a valuable impact on your SEO results – especially if you’re learning as you go what others already have under their belt.

When you bring in an expert you are freeing up your time, and letting the years they have on the table work for you.

An SEO company can develop customized strategies tailored to your specific needs and the goals of your business. It might not seem immediately obvious why a problem you have is connected to something seemingly unrelated.

For example, you’re looking for reasons why your conversion rate is lower than desired – people are abandoning their cart and not coming back. An SEO specialist might uncover that while your website looks great due to the high price point of the products mean that people want a little extra reassurance that your brand is legitimate and go to social media to see if they can find you – and because your post are sporadic and don’t contain relevant information, your profiles don’t show up in search results. SEO isn’t just about getting keywords into titles, it’s relevant in every aspect of your online presence.

A custom strategy for this client would include extensive social media rehabilitation to give your customers that confidence they need to go from ‘added to cart’ to ‘order placed’.

The technical expertise an SEO company possesses, including website optimization, keyword research, and link building are cumulative skills. While there is plenty of scope for learning the raw information of “How” but it takes a lot of hands-on work to take the theory and effectively apply it.
SEO Specialists spend a lot of time and energy staying updated with algorithm changes and industry best practices – a seemingly small change in the algorithm can have an unexpected impact across entire industries.

For example, in 2018 there was a core update that made lots of small changes to many aspects of trustworthiness and expertise weightings within the algorithm and thousands of websites relating to nutrition, health, and lifestyle choices were negatively affected. This change left people scrambling for information, but the people who came out the least scathed were those with the time and ability to understand how to enact the require changes to get back on the first page of results.

The best SEO tools are, unfortunately for budgets, paid services and an SEO company having access to these advanced SEO tools and resources is part of what you’re paying for when you hire them. Think of it similarly to the way we pay for access to streaming services to watch TV and movies for a fraction of what the streaming service pays to the company that produced the media.

Some of these tools are hundreds or thousands of dollars per year to access – and that’s before you’ve spent the time and energy learning how to use them, or using them to work on your SEO!

These tools aid in data analysis, keyword research, competitor tracking and stratify formation, and tracking the performance of your own website.
Leveraging these tools effectively can lead to more effective SEO campaigns, better converting websites when your reach is more targeted on people actually looking for your services.

For example, someone looking for legal advice in Auckland isn’t likely to need legal textbooks, and yet this kind of mismatch is common. Neither the lawyer nor the textbook retailer is served well by the wrong audience being directed to them.

There is very little stopping you from becoming your own SEO expert, there is plenty of free education out there and even more paid courses. How long might it take, though?

Becoming a self-taught SEO expert requires a combination of knowledge, hand on practical experience, as well as continuous learning. The actual time it takes to become sufficiently well trained in SEO can vary depending on several factors including the level of your existing skills, the amount of time you’re happy to dedicate to courses, reading, and applying your newly found SEO skills to your own websites, and the difficulty of the industry you’re working in. it’s much easier to do well in a niche where there is little to no competition whereas trying to be visible in a highly saturated topic.

For example, standing out online as a second hand book shop in a medium sized town with only two other vendors is a simpler exercise than, say, being that same second hand bookshop in Hay on Wye – a village in the UK that is less than 1km long which has over twenty second hand bookshops.

It can take anywhere from several months to a few years to get SEO principles and strategies firmly under your belt.
Foundational knowledge involves studying the basic principles of SEO, including understanding search engines, keywords, on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and technical SEO.

Applying what you’ve learned to your real world is crucial for gaining practical experience – and to see if your approach is working.
SEO is a dynamic field that is evolving all the times thanks to rolling updates algorithms and industry trends. Continuously updating your knowledge by staying up to date with market leaders’ blogs, attending training, participating industry forums, and experimenting with new techniques.

Calculating your return on investment is very individual to you – how you value your time, the hours spent on SEO, the efficacy of doing it yourself VS getting a professional in to do it, and what it’s worth to you and your brand to have someone taking care of your online presence.

You’d be surprised how many different types of companies reach out for SEO consultation, services, and reviews. The service might be a once off style of SEO Analysis, or ongoing optimisation of sales listings, social media posts, or blog creation.

So – who exactly is paying for SEO services? Work it through with us.

A large enterprise may engage SEO services on an ongoing basis. They require blog posts, site pages, sales descriptions, and maintaining the site overall. Due to the high hourly requirement for these aspects, it might cost in excess of $5,000 a month. However, when considering if they should bring the activity ‘in house’ they realize that in order to get the results that the consultants achieve, they’d need to train one of their people for over a year and maintain licences to several expensive specialist tools.