Don’t Hire an SEO!

Your business hits a plateau. What do you do?

A qualified marketing consultant can turn your website into an engine for more leads and sales.

HOWEVER … As someone who has worked in this field for decades, I encourage you to think twice before hiring someone who:

• does not understand the challenges your business faces.
• does not understand the frustration you felt when previous marketing efforts wasted time and money.
• promises “solutions” that do not align with your business objectives.
• has “ninja” or “guru” or “rock star” in their job title, yet consistently fails to deliver the performance you require.

To put it another way, think twice before hiring anyone who calls themselves an “SEO.”

Why Most ‘SEO’ Experts Can’t Help You

You need more business, not more traffic. You need more qualified leads or customers, not window-shoppers (or worse, automated bots) finding your business website.

You don’t need reports full of charts, graphs and spreadsheets that justify your marketing spend.

You need to grow your book of business. Or get more leads. Or make your phone ring. Or see ecommerce conversions go up.

I’m not here to disparage digital marketing.

Many people who have worked in search engine optimization for years can do these things for you. Some of them have learned the nuances of search engine algorithms and understand how some of those nuances can be exploited to meet your specific needs.

But today, SEO doesn’t exist as a standalone channel. It is inextricably connected to your other marketing efforts, especially your content marketing, your social media, your online advertising (SEM), your site design (UX and UI), your tech stack, and your public relations approach.

Are you renting a billboard alongside the highway? The right partner will help you make sure it is effective as it can be. An SEO won’t even ask.

Too many businesses are putting their blogging in one silo, their SEO in another, their PPC in yet another … These team leads keep their heads down and don’t coordinate with one another. The result is a “shotgun” approach without organization, without strategy, and (most often) without results

Get a cohesive strategy. Execute a thoughtful plan. Expect gains.

YES. SEO is important. But anyone who “does SEO” without keeping your overall marketing strategy in place, without coordinating with your entire team to deliver a consistent message, is delivering SEO tactics from 2005 at best. At worse, you’ve got a snake oil salesman on your payroll.

Learn to Be Your Own SEO Expert

In 2022, business websites need more than quick tricks to fool Google.

That’s why this corner of The Austin Editor chronicles the tactics and strategies I’ve employed to help leading businesses promote themselves online. It also documents the things I’ve learned—and continue to learn—as I do my best to keep the snake oil off my list of services.

Check out any of the following topics if you want to learn about promoting your business online:

• Need an SEO Audit? Here’s My Quick & Dirty Checklist For Business Sites
• Header Tags: Why I Don’t Hit ‘Publish’ Without H1 & H2
• Syndicate Your Content: Feed Media-Hungry Websites, Get More Traffic
• Should You Use Phone Numbers In Meta Descriptions?

In the weeks to come I’ll be posting more articles. They’re designed to help businesses get ahead of their competition in local markets, across the U.S. and (in some cases) on the global stage. I hope you find some of these articles of use to you.

Do You Need A Marketing Partner?

Drop me a line via the form below. Even if you don’t need an SEO expert, feel free to reach out with any questions, suggestions or ideas; I’d love to incorporate your feedback into the site.

           —Marshall