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Who Needs a Search Engine Marketing Consulting Firm?

  
  
  
  
  

If you have a small business (a small business is generally defined as having under 100 employees, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_business), you may not think you would need to hire a search engine marketing consulting firm. However, the fact that more and more businesses every day are marketing their products and services online, most small businesses are finding that a search engine marketing consulting firm gives them a competitive edge.

No IT department?

A search engine marketing consulting firm can fulfill a very important role in your organization, especially if you don’t have a full-time IT department. The best firms will take a good look at your overall Internet strategy (if you have one) and make suggestions as how it can be improved using solutions that it has had previous success with. More likely your company doesn’t have a formal Internet strategy and that’s where a search engine marketing consulting firm can really help out. It can put together a course of action that not only meets your needs and your timing, but also meets your budget.

Are you doing-it-yourself?

Let’s say you have been managing a Google AdWords program for the past couple of years. If it is going well, you have probably been devoting a lot of your time to it. In order to be competitive, you must be on top of your bids, your keywords, and your ad verbiage. As your category becomes more competitive the cost to maintain your leading edge is going up, lowering your ROI. So you need to devote more and more of your valuable time to managing the campaign. A search engine marketing consulting firm can lighten your load right away. Many consultants have either have developed, or work with a company that has developed, software that can automate your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. No longer will you have to slog through analytics that don’t make sense or worry about being out-bid. All of that is handled for you. Best of all, many search engine marketing consulting firms report how many visitors your site is receiving plus how many people called you from your paid search program and even who those people are.

Don’t know how to start?

If you haven’t yet dabbled in paid search, even better. Because of it’s experience and expertise in setting-up and managing campaigns, a search engine marketing consulting firm will save you a ton of time and money by doing it right the first time.

What does Optimization mean?

In addition to paid search, a search engine marketing consulting firm will explain the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a strategy for improving the amount and the quality of visitors to a website from the center of a search engine results page (what is commonly referred to as the organic listings). What could be better than being on the first page of results in your category without having to “pay per click”? Unfortunately, there are many, many unscrupulous SEO companies out that who target small businesses, and if you choose the wrong company, you could waste a lot of your precious advertising dollars, or worse, be knocked off Google for an indefinite length of time. Your search engine marketing consulting firm will be able to recommend an SEO company who they have vetted that has delivered top quality work in the past, thereby protecting your website, your interests, and getting you better rankings as well.

Do you hate your website?

If you don’t have a website, or if your site needs an update or even a complete re-do, a search engine marketing consulting firm can be a life-saver. Relationships with numerous website designers will ensure that you can choose the one that is best suited for your project. And, in order to make sure that your beautiful website actually improves and increases your bottom line, your search engine marketing consulting firm will help with concept and copy.

What’s “Social Networking”?

In addition, your search engine marketing consulting firm can help you set-up and manage blogs, newsletters, email campaigns, videos and more.

For a small business, it makes sense to consider meeting with a search engine marketing consulting firm. Free consultations are often available and since the firm has an array of Internet products and services to recommend, you’ll end up with solutions that are right for your business. Worried about costs? Many search engine marketing consulting firms don’t charge ongoing consulting fees but work with their clients on a project-by-project basis.

So, who needs a search engine marketing consulting firm? You do!

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