Should I hire a Local SEO Consultant or a Search Marketing Agency?

If you read any of our frequently asked questions about SEO, this is the one you should read. Recently we were looking to hire a new accountant for our business and personal returns. When it comes to spending money, I am pretty frugal... Actually, I'm downright cheap. I don't like spending money on things that don't provide a return on investment. So, I understand when people look for deals, or are hesitant about spending money; especially when it comes to costs that are newer to many companies, such as SEO and online marketing. Unfortunately for me, competent and knowledgeable tax professionals are ones that cost more. I didn't want to admit it, and my wife pointed out the fact that we can't expect to be cheap if we want to ensure everything is done correctly and we maximize our savings. So I thought about this recently when speaking with a potential client about our no contract SEO services.

The client felt our prices were good, but was struggling to decide which plan to use because they had previously used an SEO consultant that was cheaper, but yielded no results. That's the catch, right there, and I reminded them that they paid the same SEO company for a few years, but got no results, so why would they want to repeat that mistake with another unproven SEO consultant? If someone is good at what they do, they are not going to do it cheap. SEO takes time. The time to do SEO work for the average client is about 2-3 hours per week (8-12 hours per month). If someone is charging $100 or $200 per month to do that; do you think they are actually working for you for as little as $10 an hour? Rather, do you realize that they are likely just discounting their rate to get enough clients to pay their bills? I'm sure some of you reading this have figured it out already, if someone is undercharging you, they are not as good as they claim to be. Why else would they work for $10-$20 an hour only to have the headache of doing taxes as a consultant every year?

Furthermore, if you take a second to check the content of some of these small SEO consultants, you will find things that demonstrate that they are a liability as well. I have actually found local companies that are violating copyright by using content that we have had in place for a decade or more. Our work is all protected by copyright, and all of it has a historical record. If they were good at SEO, they would not need to take other's content. If they do it to us, what do you think they will do for your business? Can you afford the additional cost when you have been found to be violating another company's copyright?

How long do you think these SEO consultants will be in business? This is another question you need to ask. One of our clients hired us because their previous "SEO professional" quit doing website design and SEO because he started delivering pizza's. Now we always joke with the client that if we don't do well on their project, we can always ask them what they want on their pizza... Fortunately, we have done well to keep them as a client, so no pizza deliveries any time soon. We love pizza, don't get us wrong. But SEO and online marketing is not a hobby or a job for us; it's a career; one that we have been doing since 1994.

The simply truth is, you get what you pay for. While we are not the cheapest out there, we are very reasonable and have a long history of being SEO Professionals, have been featured on FOX Business and FOX News, and have received awards, and recognition for our efforts, including from Google. So that's what you get when you hire Make it Active, LLC to do your online marketing, rather than hiring an SEO consultant.

Find out more about our SEO Consulting Services. We offer both contract SEO and no contract SEO plans.