Whether you are a small business and you are concerned with growing your online presence and attracting more business, or you are just starting out with a brand new eCommerce venture, one of the main questions you’ll be pondering is just how important it is to work with an SEO agency. Is it possible for business owners to have success online without partnering with a third party SEO company? And just how important is SEO for your website?
If you are on the fence with hiring the pros and wish to see if it’s worth going it alone, read on for an honest assessment.
Is it possible to succeed online without hiring an SEO agency?
Absolutely it is! Though of course, it largely comes down to what success looks like to you and your business. For example, if you have no plans to scale and expand your business, then online success could be as simple as having a user-friendly website with detailed FAQs for your prospective customers to refer to, thus taking the pressure off your customer service team – in which case your needs would be rather limited.
On the other hand, if you are managing a relatively small eCommerce business and you are desperate to rapidly scale your store and take things to the next level, then the amount of work required to get you there will be significantly different.
In any case, you can handle your own SEO requirements to an extent – and experience relative success. However, this is only possible if you have the time to thoroughly research and understand how much work is required – and indeed apply it yourself.
How important is SEO for a website?
Put it this way: a website without SEO is like buying a gym membership, never once attending, and then hoping to get into shape by chance. You’ve got to know what you’re doing and put the time in.
The fact is, there are countless websites online, all of which are competing for your ideal customer’s attention, and if you wish to cut through the noise and stand out, then you’ve got your work cut out for you.
Here’s a quick glance at your website’s ‘onsite’ technical SEO requirements (excluding SEO basics, keyword research, link building, content creation, etc.):
- Planning your website structure.
- Ensuring your site is crawlable and indexable.
- Using HTTPS.
- Making sure the website is accessible at one domain.
- Improving page load speed.
- Building with mobile-first in mind.
- Adding image compression plugins and all other necessary apps and widgets.
- Fixing broken pages and links.
- Having intuitive internal linking.
- Regularly monitoring and updating your website.
And the list goes on!
The above is just a handful of the onsite requirements for SEO and it is a very small part of the larger SEO campaign requirements. And that’s not to mention any of the other digital marketing strategies (e.g., PPC, email marketing, Facebook / Instagram, etc.).
Particularly if you have no previous experience with any of the above tasks, you’ll have an awful lot of research to do. Throw keyword research into the mix, along with building a healthy, ‘white-hat’ backlink profile and creating lots of high-quality, keyword-rich content; you’ll be fast approaching the immense workload carried out by a multitude of full-time SEO experts.
Even as a small business looking to improve your local SEO in Singapore for example, there’s still going to be an awful lot of competition. If you want to make your mark and outshine your biggest competitors, it may be worth calling in the cavalry.
Conclusion: You can do your own SEO but a dedicated SEO agency will do it better
In conclusion, you can indeed handle your SEO requirements, however, you will be eating into so much of your valuable time. The fact is, running a business is far more time-intensive than a standard full time job, which means your resources will be limited.
As such, we would always strongly recommend that you hire an SEO agency to assist you with your needs. Not only will they have the experience and expertise to make light work of the tasks that would otherwise take you longer, but with a proven track record of success, you will be far more likely to experience the results you desire – sooner.
We understand the desire to try and save money and keep everything in-house, however, with the right agency, outsourcing is a far smarter and superior alternative.
