Your Search Engine Optimization Company--Protecting Your Time and Your Brand
A search engine optimization company can create a campaign to bring you new, targeted leads, and raise your company's online profile, all while keeping in line with your branding strategy. However, you will find that in order to get quality results that last, significant changes will need to be made to your website, from the addition of copy to changes to the code to alterations to the site's design.
If your internal resources are already strained to the breaking point, you are probably considering outsourcing your SEO efforts. The search engine optimization company that you select should have the capability to handle all aspects of the project with minimal involvement from your company to save you time and keep your branding strategy intact.
Protecting Your Time
Your search engine optimization company needs to be respectful of your time by making resources available to handle copywriting, implementation, and keyphrase recommendations, some of the most time-consuming parts of an SEO campaign, so that you don't have to. While you may need to provide reference material about your branding strategy, and while you should always have an approval step for each milestone in your campaign, your company should otherwise be able to sit back and relax while the search engine optimization company handles all the details.
Copywriting
It's very likely that your internal marketing department does not have the additional time that would be necessary to write the optimized copy that needs to appear on your site. Your search engine optimization company should have the resources available to handle all copy, from brand new pages to updates of existing pages, as long as you are able to provide the materials that accurately describe your products and services, as well as your branding strategy and marketing message.
Implementation
Likewise, your IT department is probably already stretched thin with internal issues. While your search engine optimization company does not perform the same functions as your Web design firm, it still should be able to implement all changes to your site on a test bed, allowing you final approval before your site goes live. This will eliminate the need for your IT people to be deeply involved in the process.
Keyphrase Recommendations
Many companies believe they need to be heavily involved in the selection of keyphrases for their SEO campaign in order to keep the initiative in line with their branding strategy. However, you may be surprised to find that the lingo your customers are using, and the phrases they're searching for, are not the same as the ones you might use internally. Your search engine optimization company should have the experience necessary to do all of the research for you and present its findings, leaving you to simply review and approve the results.
These are only a few examples of how your search engine optimization company can protect your time. A full SEO campaign involves many more steps than this, but your firm should maintain the philosophy of adhering to your branding strategy while taking as much of the burden off of your hands as possible throughout the entire process.
Protecting Your Brand
When you hand the reins of your SEO campaign over to your search engine optimization company, you need to be able to trust that your branding strategy will be followed. In order for this to happen, you need to be sure that the search engine optimization company you've hired has the proven resources available, so you're not jeopardizing your own brand in order to save time. And you need to be confident that the firm can produce copy that is as accurate and well-written as your internal resources would have done.
Copywriter
Your search engine optimization company should have a copywriter on staff that has proven skill in writing search engine optimized copy, and marketing copy in general. The firm should be able to provide its clients with writing samples and references to demonstrate the copywriter's ability to interpret a company's branding strategy and messaging.
Marketing Materials
At the beginning of your campaign, your search engine optimization company should request a "data dump" of all of your current marketing materials that reveal your branding strategy, including whitepapers and press releases.
