By: Jeff HirzYou’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears into your business; you’ve put in long hours to ensure that its wensite launch goes off without a hitch, that everything to the barest detail is done as perfectly as possible. As a driven and results-oriented individual, you expect the same level of perfectionism from those you’ll hire to handle your company’s search engine optimization (SEO) and website creation. It would seem to make sense, then, that a company that specializes in digital marketing handles your SEO while another that concentrates on web design takes on the creation of your site. And you may have found it challenging to find one company that can handle both of your needs.
In reality, however, using two separate companies to handle these deeply intertwined tasks can lead to confusion, miscommunication, and disappointing results. What you need is a firm that offers world-class website creation and the SEO mastery that’ll get your website to the top of the search engines and help you drive new visitors and customers each day.
Before Your Website Launches
The first step in achieving that dream is ensuring that your site is built on a solid foundation. We speak here not only of the reliability of your site but also of the SEO that will ensure that your message is sent out into the world the instant you’re ready to start serving customers. An SEO plan must be built into the website before launch, as Google will index your website and begin ranking it right after launch. Though the timing can be tricky to pull off, the value of completing the necessary SEO tasks pre-launch is immeasurable.
Pre-Launch SEO Tasks Include:
- Keyword research
- Strategy planning
- Competitor research
- Content optimization
- Title tag creation & optimization
- Google Analytics set up
- URL structure configuration
- 301 redirect implementation
- Canonical configuration
- & more
A lacking launch where these items are not considered can deal a blow that your website may never recover from. The greatest site in the world won’t be of any use to you if no one knows it’s there; likewise, the best marketing plan ever devised will do more harm than good if it directs potential clients to a half-finished site. These costly mistiming errors are all too common when the tasks of site creation and SEO are handled by separate firms, as there’s very little you can do to ensure that clear and constant communication is occurring between those you’ve hired. What’s worse, finding out who’s to blame for a misstep can often feel like mediating a conflict between quarreling siblings; you’re more likely to get a bunch of shrugging and finger-pointing than you are an admission of guilt.
Using one SEO agency for both tasks means accountability. It means utilizing one team whose members are already adept and experienced at communicating with one another. It means simplified planning and rapid response to any issues that may occur during the creation of your site and the buildup to its launch. Most importantly, it means never having to worry that your SEO will be rolled out before your site is ready or vice versa. If one firm is responsible for both tasks as a packaged product, then the members of that firm (no matter which side of the equation they’re working on) are incentivized to work together to ensure that your site and its associated SEO are developed in concert to be as effective as possible. Designers are working with the SEO team, and programmers with the SEO team, and it’s a well-rounded, collaborative effort.
Post-Launch SEO
A successful launch, however, is just the beginning. The real work comes when those in charge of your site and its SEO are tasked with ensuring that both continue to run smoothly from then on. Even if you hire two companies that are extremely capable of addressing issues solely contained to their purview, the reality of digital marketing is that very few problems belong entirely to one side or the other. The effectiveness of a site’s SEO, after all, is highly dependent on that site’s content and construction. That being the case, it may be difficult to tell which company is at fault if a certain page isn’t performing to your expectations, and even more difficult to get either to admit accountability. You might find yourself listening to your web design and SEO companies argue over responsibility while your site (and business) languishes, and since both know they’re not entirely responsible for the site’s performance, neither may be particularly motivated to make things right.
Compare that to the response you’ll receive when one firm is responsible for both your site and your SEO. Because everyone’s working on the same team, there’s no time wasted in shifting blame or trying to make themselves look better than the other guy. If the SEO members of the team have a suggestion for the improvement of your website’s performance, they can easily communicate that suggestion to the web development specialists and have it implemented much more quickly than if they had to sell that suggestion to someone they barely know at an entirely different company.
Consider also how much easier it’ll be to work with just one company when it comes to regularly-scheduled meetings. Setting a time for you to meet simultaneously with two different companies can be a nightmare on its own, one that only grows more frustrating when said meeting consists of them arguing over how to improve the performance of your site and its marketing. Making one firm responsible for both tasks, on the other hand, means meeting with just one group of people, one group dedicated to working together to ensure the continued growth and success of your business. Setting goals, settling issues and conducting reviews all become a matter of course when you know that everyone’s on the same page, lending you a peace of mind that’s so often missed by owners trying to juggle the needs and demands of two separate firms.
We hope that you’ll choose wisely and that you’ll contact us if you have any further questions about the benefits of the one-firm solution.
