I happened to talk with an acquaintance who was running a business in travel industry. He has been running his big enough travel agency since last 10 years with help of traditional ways of marketing like Billboards and news paper advertisements. He is pretty new to online world and have been hearing a lot about online business, online marketing like keywords.
Due to my little bit knowledge in online marketing and internet business, he had invited me to discuss on this point. Our discussion was flowing in different directions in internet marketing and I kept on talking about SERPs - my mistake, I did not explain him what all SERPs are about. So I quickly gave him overview on how search engine ranking work and how it benefits to the businesses.
Now when you discuss few things with novice in that field, you yourself get to learn a lot. Because they sometimes come up with such questions probably you never thought of or you never have given time to think upon.
I gave him examples of how my blogs went from PR0 to PR4 and how they started appearing in Google search engine’s 1st page for specific keywords and bringing me traffic. He asked me, “Can we get better SERPs in a month or so as I need to launch my new website within 15 days and get the things rolling in month?”.
I could have just answered a straight NO - as I have seen how many efforts we put after any website’s better search engine placement and then be helplessly dependent on Google or any other search engines like Yahoo or MSN to index our websites and bring search engine traffic. And I did not want to give him false promises as well and did not want to discourage him from coming into online world of marketing as well. [Mostly such people with traditional thoughts are scared to enter online and just shy away if they get negative response in the beginning].
I suggested him - Yes, you may get better search engine placement for your new travel website but you might like to hire a search engine optimization firm so that they not only would help you in building links for the new website but also help in choosing right keywords for sponsored searches and optimize the site rightly for natural listings. Though I suggested him to opt for a firm, I personally never had tried one yet but have been hearing success stories from other webmaster friends.
Personally, I feel this helps to big businesses than small bloggers. Simply because such businesses can spend a lot of money on marketing then why not some fees to the people who do it rightly for you. Simply like hiring an interior designer for your house work than doing it yourself when you are spending few thousand $$ on make over of your new home. Better give it to the experts when it comes down to spending lot of money, did I say right?
What you think? shoot your thoughts.
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SEO firms are definitely for huge internet entrepreneurs only. I just can’t imagine how small bloggers can earn back the fees that they pay to SEO firms. If you are a blogger or you own a small website, looking freelancers that are starting to build their portfolios are more cost effective.