Do you have to pay for SEO?

In previous articles – such as What does SEO mean in marketing? and What does an SEO specialist do? – we outlined some of the basic concepts in SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. The process of SEO has varying price tags attached to it: it can cost as little as a couple of hours of your time or as much as hiring a digital marketing agency to up your SEO ranking. So, you’re probably wondering if a free option is available, why pay for SEO? There are pros and cons to both methods. In this article, we’ll chat about them all so that you can make an informed decision about the choices you make in your digital marketing strategy.

Paying for SEO skills

Search Engine Optimisation is very complex and highly technical. It involves many processes as well as a lot of logical thinking. For example, it involves:

• Optimising a website for focus keywords so that the people who are searching for what the company offers will be presented with the site.
• Building quality, relevant backlinks to a website.
• Making suggestions for content to be created which is rich in the relevant keywords as well as making sure that the content is not stuffed with keywords and sounds natural.

SEO experts are extremely skilled and experienced especially when they are backed by a digital marketing certificate as provided by the Digital School of Marketing. The really good ones have spent years upon years optimising countless websites, closely scrutinising data and making slight adjustments to their work so that the site can climb up the SEO ranks and so help with the company’s marketing. This means that if you want to get an exceptional person or agency to perform your Search Engine Optimisation you’ll have to be prepared to pay quite a hefty sum. However, it will be worth it!

DIY SEO

If you don’t have budget for an SEO agency or full-time SEO expert, it is possible to do optimise your own website for SEO. Before you do this, however, it is vital that you perform extensive keyword research so that you know what searches people are initiating – surrounding your product – so that you can incorporate these elements into your site.

Google has countless resources to help you with your SEO. One of these is Google Trends which helps you see how people are phrasing their search queries so that you can use this information in your website copy. The search engine giant has also put together some guidelines to show you what they deem as a good site. This will help you with your SEO as, with this help, you’ll be able to design the user journey through your site in the best possible way. This is important with regard to SEO as Google ranks websites, which are easy to navigate, highly.

If you decide to do your SEO yourself, we highly recommend that you do the Digital School of Marketing’s SEO and Web Analytics Course. This highly acclaimed digital marketing course is accredited through the Media, Information and Communication Technologies (MICT) SETA. Modules include:

• How your website needs to be structured for optimal SEO performance
• The fundamentals of SEO copywriting
• How to put together different types of sitemaps
• The most recent and up-to-date link-building techniques
• What is metadata and why is it important?
• Why you need to label your website
• How to interpret your Google Analytics dashboard so that you can constantly improve your SEO.

This digital marketing certification is the best of its kind. You won’t find another digital marketing qualification out there that is perfectly suited to help you improve your SEO rankings and expand your digital marketing strategy. Our past students have all told us that this digital marketing course has improved their careers immensely! So take the leap and become an SEO expert today. Sign up for the Digital School of Marketing’s SEO and Web Analytics Course now and see how a thorough knowledge of SEO will help you and your business.

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