When the plumber comes by to fix your toilet, do you also ask him to remodel your bathroom cabinets?
When you go to your physician for your annual exam, do you ask her if she can perform acupuncture on you to help relieve your allergies?
The answer is “no”. However, those service providers are usually willing to give out a referral to someone they know who could help with that particular specialty.
It’s the same thing with technology, particularly with industries related to the internet. The common phrase we hear is, “Yeah, we can do your SEO too“, which is something I hear a lot from web designers.
Don’t get me wrong – web designers are essential for creating beautiful, user friendly websites that business owners need to successfully push their brand and show their products and services to their potential customers. It takes a creative eye and artistic mind to come up with the layout that matches a business’ brand and feel. We have relationships with web designers who we refer out to for this kind of work and we respect it (especially me, the analytical type).
However, over the years Motoza has been in business, we have had clients sign on with us because their web designer was doing their SEO, but weren’t getting anything out it.
Here is the main reason: When a web designer says they will do your SEO, they are likely referring to the on-page SEO on your website, not the SEO work that needs to be done outside of your website. This external work contributes to the majority of how effective your campaign is.
Some examples of external SEO work that needs to be done includes submitting your business’ information to business listing citations such as Yelp.com or YellowPages.com, reaching out to webmasters for guest blog opportunities, connecting with online editorials for company brand mentions, and much more. This is really the grunt work of SEO and it takes a lot of time.
The SEO work on the website is important – it tells Google and the other search engines about your business and your products/services (i.e. your relevancy). However, without the external SEO work, which helps establish authority to Google, then it will be difficult for your business to be found.
This is why Motoza complements well with web designers; they get to focus on the creative and can help with the on-page SEO, and we cover the analytical aspects and the outreach to develop your website’s authority.
So the next time a web designer tries to sell you their SEO services with their website design, be skeptical and ask them what their approach is for their external SEO.
