When to Hire a Search Engine Marketing Firm

Managing your web site — optimizing it for search engines, keeping keywords current, deciding how much to bid on each keyword, and tracking the performance of your advertising campaigns — is important to your online success, but it can prevent you from doing what you do best: running your business. The decision to hire outside help, especially if your budget is limited, is an important one. Here’s what a search engine marketing (SEM) firm can do for you.

What Do SEM Firms Do?
Search engine marketing firms perform a variety of services. Some handle every aspect of planning your online marketing campaign from start to finish, while others focus only on the search engine optimization side of the process. Some available services SEM firms provide are:

• Register your site with search engines : Some SEM firms will handle the search engine submission and registration process for you. This entails creating your account with the search engines, submitting your URLs, handling payments for each listing, etc.



• Keyword research : Keywords are the cornerstone of the paid search process. SEM firms will find out which words most customers associate with your product and determine which ones should be used in a paid search campaign.



• Write ad copy : SEM firms will write ad copy that will entice customers to click through to your site.



• Measure analytics and determine ROI : SEM firms will track the progress of all of your paid search campaigns to determine whether or not your strategies are working. They will study click-through rates, customer conversion rates, advertising ROI, etc.

What to Look for in an SEM Firm

• Pricing: Like any outside service, SEM firms come at a cost, and in some cases it can be quite significant. Most firms begin pricing at $1,500 per month for initial consultations. Others charge up to $200,000 for complete site overhauls and pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Keep the reality of your budget in mind. Lower-end services can help you get started for under $1,000 but usually only include basic “how-to” advice.



• Services offered: Does the firm offer all of the services you need, or do they only specialize in certain areas? For example, if you need a firm that can handle your entire online marketing campaign, but the firm you’re thinking about using only does search engine optimization, you should look elsewhere.



• References: Ask to speak with the firm’s existing clients before you make a decision. Find out how long it took for the SEM firm to devise and implement their campaigns, what kind of results they’ve had, and if they’ve achieved the ROI for which they were looking. Some questions to ask are:
  
  
  1. Was the firm easy to work with?
  2. Did it follow through on promises?
  3. Did it return calls and emails promptly?
  4. Was it responsive when there was a problem?
  5. Did its efforts increase sales or just traffic? You may find that a firm with a good track record in drawing traffic doesn’t necessarily convert many of those visitors into customers.
  6. Did it work with you to offer good service at a reasonable price?
  7. Would you work with this firm again?

Before selecting a firm, take the time learn about the industry’s best practices as well as which practices are commonly frowned upon by the major industry play ers. Educate yourself about search engine spam, and make sure that your potential SEM vendor doesn’t employ any of the practices that ultimately could get your site banned from the most popular search engines.

Hiring an SEM firm can be a financial investment that can provide great results — and knowing what to look for can ensure that your investment pays off.

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