SEO – Make Sure You Don’t Pay Twice!

I ran into an old buddy yesterday who runs a tech related ecommerce site. He has been in the game since day one and made a fair bit of cash when the internet was in its infancy. Of late he has been struggling due to excessive competition and the global economic downturn. Price guide websites have put the squeeze on guys like this and the competition for top search spots is at an all time high.

Enter The Internet Marketing Consultant…

He went on to tell me that he has employed the services of an internet marketing consultancy to analyse his site and produce a report highlighting where things could be improved. Fair enough I thought, good idea. However, it turns out that his internet marketing consultant isn’t going to implement any of the SEO, just offer practical recommendations for improvement. I was completely unaware that operations like this existed. I explained my dismay and said to him that he would effectively be paying twice, once for consultancy and once for implementation. I also mentioned that some SEO companies actually provide a free website audit. Needless to say he wished he had run into me a couple of weeks before hand. Anyway, one person’s misfortune is another person’s luck, and I am sharing this information to prevent others from having to use a separate internet marketing consultancy and professional SEO company.

Internet Marketing Consultants

I think the reasoning behind this new way of doing business is that there are a number of marketing agencies trying to increase revenue by tapping into the internet marketing field. This has opened the door for ‘internet marketing consultancy’ without the actual practice of professional SEO. Internet marketing consultants may offer you what sounds like a good strategy, but can their actions speak as loud as their words? Do yourself a favour – bypass the internet marketing consultant and hire a ‘one stop SEO service that provides a free assessment of your site and implements all their own recommendations.