If SEO Is About Content, Who Needs an SEO Firm?

We’ve written quite a bit about the role that content plays in SEO. In fact, that message rings across the internet these days, because there is no single factor that influences search rank—on any search engine—as heavily as regular, high value content. That won’t change anytime soon.

But this raises an interesting question for business owners: if the key to a successful SEO strategy is content, then who needs an SEO firm at all? After all, isn’t content something that can be created-in house?

First let’s define our terms. By “content” we mean, above all, the text on your static web pages and your blog. All of it needs to be high quality and the blog needs to update often, ideally multiple times per week.

But content includes other things as well:

• High quality articles that you or your staff members write on outside web sites, that are not part of a linkbuilding pyramid. An op-ed in an industry news site is a good example.
• Videos posted to your Youtube account and images posted to your Pinterest account, when they are original and useful.
• Posts on other social channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.
• Other legitimate content that you put out, that links back to you. Press releases and scholarships are good examples if done in moderation.

And yes—you absolutely can produce and manage all of this content in-house, if you’re willing to put the time into it.

But even in the age of content-driven SEO you need more than just a good blog. Working with companies of all sizes, we find that most businesses come to an outside SEO expert for three simple reasons:

1. Good content isn’t easy to produce. While anyone on your staff can write a blog post, not all of them are going to be good. The best online content does more than sit on the page, it garners shares and engagement—which turn into more links/social signals aimed at your company. And time is a very real factor as well, since creating content is a job unto itself. We can’t tell you how many CEO’s have vowed to blog twice a week only to come back and ask for freelance content.
2. The technical side still matters. Recently, Chris Marentis gave some simple SEO tips to business owners that came straight from Google itself. The piece is designed to make DIY SEO easier, but for many business owners it will have the opposite effect: just read as far as “schema markups” and “XML Sitemaps” and see if you’re still with him. Content matters, but so does a long list of technical factors that usually require an expert.
3. What if you have a penalty? We find that many business owners don’t even know if they currently suffer from a penalty from Google—let alone how to get rid of one. A penalty can hurt your ranking so badly you don’t even show up in searches for your own company name. At that point, your latest blog post can’t save you.

At EverSpark we believe in giving business leaders the tools to understand and manage their own online presence. But we also realize that for many businesses, the time and technical knowledge is not something they can throw together in the back kitchen. That’s why we offer custom SEO/internet marketing solutions and a free free consultation to get you started.