Outsourcing Search Engine Positioning

No.

If your main product is something like "insect pins" that skewer poor butterflies for a museum display case, you're in luck. AltaVista shows only 132 pages with the phrase "insect pins." With a little bit of effort, you ought to be able to come out on top, and become the Insect Pin King -- or Insect King Pin. :-)

Popular Keywords

But many of us are in fields with tens of thousands of competitors on the Web. Look at these AltaVista search results:

If you have a competitive keyword or keyphrase you're trying to get to the top of the search engines, it will take a great deal of learning, fine-tuning, resubmitting, and patience to get ranked in the Top 10 on a single search engine. To get a Top 10 ranking on 4 of the top 6 search engines will take even more work.

The average small businessperson just doesn't have time to add search engine positioning to her weekly schedule. This is a heavy commitment, and you need to be familiar with HTML to do it. You could hire a person in-house to do this for you and give him a copy of WebPosition Gold software, but it might take months for him to get good at it, especially if your keyphrase is one of the difficult ones. Plan on this person spending at least 20 hours or more per week on positioning, to start.

I've spent probably 100 hours in the last few months and achieved No. 2 rankings in two search engines (though one of those has now slipped to #11). I need to add that this was for a VERY competitive key phrase, but it has been a real time investment. For most small businesses I recommend hiring a professional agency to do this.

Pricing Models

I've found two basic pricing models:

• Set-Up and Pay-Per-Click. You'll pay a set-up fee of several hundred dollars, plus pay a fee per click for visitors to your site. Of course, the contractor has a vested interest in getting your ranking high. Typically you don't "own" these gateway pages; they reside on the contractor's website, so if you stop paying, your position is instantly gone.
• Flat Fee. Pay several hundred to several thousand dollars for positioning of your pages. Also expect a monthly maintenance fee to keep the rankings from slipping.

Some firms combine these payment models. Expect to pay more for highly competitive keywords, since they require a lot more work.

What to Look For

What should you be looking for in a search engine positioning firm? What kinds of questions should you be asking?

• How long have they been in business?
• What clients have they done positioning for? The list of names should give you some indication of how much experience they have. You don't want someone who is inexperienced, since they could do something that might reflect badly on your firm. Be aware, however, that some companies don't allow their name to be listed.
• Ask for reference names and phones for clients they have done work for. Then actually telephone some of these and check them out.
• Don't do business with positioning companies that send you unsolicited e-mail. If they abuse the etiquette of business on the Net for their own business, how will they represent yours? Some positioning methods are considered unethical and can get your domain banned from entire search engines.
• Don't shop for price alone. Cheapest is not always adequate.
• Do they build gateway pages on their server or yours? Do you own the gateway pages or do they? If you were to stop paying, what happens? Could they just sell your high-ranked position to your competitor? You'll find reputable companies that build on your server. And ones that build on their server. Just make sure you understand what you're paying for.
• Do they promote pornographic websites? This will help you learn something about the values that drive the company.
• What kind of guarantee do they offer, if any? In what kind of time frame do they guarantee results. Have them explain it to you clearly and in writing. Offering a guarantee is not necessarily a sign of quality, however. Some of the best firms offer no guarantees. They just deliver.
• What do they charge to maintain your gateway pages so you retain high rankings?
• Do they only deal with the major search engines? There are dozens of Podunk search engines out there where it's easy to get high rankings, but it doesn't matter, since no one uses them.
• Will your gateway pages visible to the users that go to them? If so, do they look attractive and will they reflect well on your company?

Don't be dismayed if it takes several weeks to two of months or more to begin getting results. Some search engines don't index you right away, and it may take a couple cycles of submit-index-check rankings-alter-resubmit before your pages come to the top. I don't encourage you to try for the No. 1 spot on a search engine. Anything on the first page is good, and if you can get into the top 5 or 6 that's wonderful.

What Is Search Engine Positioning Worth?

Assuming you have your website or online store in good shape, leads and sales will be proportionate to the amount of traffic to your site. Let's say your average sale is $40, your conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who make a purchase) is 1%, and your gross profit is 15% of revenue.

The question becomes, if you got into the top 5 or 10 on a couple of search engines, how much would it increase your visitor flow and sales? If you find favorable numbers, you might see your way clear to invest in search engine positioning.

Of course, if you could double your conversion rate from 1% to 2%, it would measurably affect your bottom line, too. That's exactly what Web Commerce Today newsletter (http://wilsonweb.com/wct/) is designed to help you do. Shameless plug!

Whom Do You Recommend?

I'm often asked whom I can recommend that does search engine positioning. That's hard. There are doubtless many very reputable firms around the world. There's no way I can know about or screen them all, though I do provide that kind of help to my consulting clients. But you ought to be able to sort them out with the questions above.

When Should You Attempt to Do It Yourself?

If you have a company with a unique niche, and the search words used to find your company would be quite unique, then you can probably do search engine positioning in-house. If the search words, however, are extremely widely used to find your kind of business, then you'll probably need to outsource the project to get good results.