You’ve got a brand-new website design and now you need traffic and leads to drive sales for your business. What do you do next? Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is an effective way to raise your website profile in the search engine results pages (SERPs). What’s more, it’s commonly understood to get “free” traffic. And this is where you need to think: Do you do DIY SEO or use a digital marketing agency?
Do I Even Need SEO to Promote My Website?
That’s a solid question. Put it this way: Do you need a postal address, phone number, or an email address for customers to get in touch?
The answer is that the more channels you leave open, the greater the opportunity of potential clients being able to reach you. Some may prefer to call, others may send an email. And your address is important legally and for visitors to be able to physically find your organisation.
There’s also Pay Per Click (PPC) at your disposal, like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, plus all the social media channels, and even traditional print methods (with QR codes) to drive website visits.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a healthy and intelligent decision to use SEO to get organic traffic.
Put it this way: just looking at the Google Analytics (GA4) account of a technology client based in London, there’s a report for traffic acquisition. In the past month, they have had the following sessions:
- Organic Search: 51.22%
- Direct: 24.69%
- Referral: 8.01%
- Paid Search: 6.48%
- Unassigned: 4.13%
- Email: 2.39%
- Organic Social: 1.82%
- Paid Social: 0.56%
As you can see, organic traffic provides over half of the company’s visits.
So, yes – you need SEO to provide website visibility.
And Do I Conduct a DIY SEO Campaign?
You can indeed embark upon a Do It Yourself (DIY) SEO campaign.
The Benefits of DIY SEO
Whether you’re a sole trader, a micro business, or a small-to-medium-sized organisation, there are merits to doing your own SEO work:
- Cost-effectiveness: If you know SEO then you can “just get on with it” and you’ll save on digital retainers and project fees.
- Total control: DIY SEO means that you’re 100% in control of your strategy and efforts all of the time, taking as fast or slow a pace as you have the appetite for.
- Learning: By taking the reins of your DIY SEO strategy you’ll be able to learn about the huge world of search engine optimisation.
- Accomplishment: Bringing SEO in-house and having success brings an amazing sense of achievement. It’s good for your own or your team’s morale.
There are of course challenges to having to conduct your own SEO work, such as: the sheer amount of knowledge to digest, keeping up with the latest algorithm updates, and being able to react to changes.
The Benefits of Using an Experienced SEO Agency
Again, no matter your business size, there are multiple advantages of using a seasoned digital agency to create and execute an SEO strategy for your website:
- Expertise and experience: The best SEO agencies employ seasoned professionals whose job it is to be search engine experts and stay ahead of industry trends.
- Time & Cost Efficiency: SEO professionals have immense experience in their field and are incredibly efficient in everything from keyword research, strategy, and optimisation to content creation and reporting.
- Tools and Specialist Resources: Digital agencies have access to advanced industry tools, and often have their own in-house methods honed over years of experience.
- Measurement & Reporting: Data-driven agencies understand, utilise, and report with a wide range of tools that provide actionable insights.
- Risk Management: An agency’s experience and expertise reduces the risk of error that can often surface in the work of part-time or casual SEOs.
- Focus: With a team of SEO professionals onboard, they can focus on your digital marketing goals whilst you can focus on your core business goals.
In the medium to long-term, SEO agencies are highly cost-effective compared to the DIY SEO approach.
Bonus Benefits: The Added Value of Clever Marketing
Whilst we appreciate and understand the DIYT SEO approach [We all had to start somewhere, right? – Ed] we believe that SEO agencies offer exceptional benefits and value.
As a bonus, there’s even more value you can receive from using Clever Marketing for search engine optimisation:
- Full service: As a FULL-SERVICE digital marketing agency, as well as offering the full range of SEO services. From on-page and technical, to ecommerce and local SEO, we provide PPC, web design, graphic design, copywriting, and AI-powered benefits.
- Decades of Experience: Some members of our SEO team have over 20 years’ experience in the industry. That’s more than you’ll find in a whole team at other firms.
- Creative: Clever Marketing’s design team has more than 60 years’ experience [Is that all?! – Ed]. So you get an extra edge on your campaigns with their input.
- Passion: To some, SEO is just a job. The Clever Marketing SEO team lives and breathes SEO, and takes a holistic approach to search, integrating broader ideas to create organic success.
- Customer Service: From our dedicated account managers to the SEO team, the MD and our Strategy Director, everyone at CMUK pushes to supply the best customer experience possible.
There is plenty more added value you could receive from working with Clever Marketing as your SEO agency, but you’ll just have to work with us and find out.
Conclusion
All that said, we still support the concept of DIY SEO for business websites.
However, in our long professional experience, many organisations “give it a go” and realise they need the extra help of a season digital marketing agency like Clever. That’s where most of our work comes from – firms realising that there is SO much more to SEO than just titles, descriptions, and AI-generated content.
So, weigh up the pros and cons and let us know if you need a chat about SEO for your website.
Clever Marketing is biased in DIY SEO vs Using a Digital Agency, but if your business really needs to go those extra miles, it really is well worth calling us. You’ll get far more than organic rankings.
Call us to test us out on 01276 402 381 or fill in the easy contact form with details of your project.