There has always been a debate in regards to the best option for businesses to acquire the SEO services their business needs, and there is no real answer. There are 3 main routes that can be taken when contracting out your requirement for search engine success. Each has their own pro’s and con’s but really depends upon what the business is looking for in terms of an internet marketing solution.

Agencies

Agencies come in 3 different packages, you have your boutique agencies that specialise in just SEO, your all-in digital agencies that cover everything digital and agencies that offer SEO services as a secondary service. Obviously agencies offering SEO as a “value adding” service are not going to be as up to date and knowledgeable as some more SEO focused agencies, however if you are using them for other services, they maybe worth considering. In reality though, you are most likely to be choosing between Boutique and Full Digital agencies when looking for solely SEO services.

Boutique Agencies

A boutique agency offering SEO, is only focused on SEO. They most likely will have staff specialised in specific areas, such as link building, social media, content writing etc.

Pros

• Up to Date knowledge of latest SEO trends
• Access to good resources for social media & link building
• Focused solely on getting you results

Cons

• Often have no development or design knowledge
• A lot of cowboy companies around offering just SEO
• Not focused on conversions and sales, only rankings

Full Digital Agencies

A full or All-In digital agency will generally be full of very smart, switched on people who keep up to date with the latest trends in design, development and SEO. You will find that a full digital agencies approach to SEO is more rounded, they understand how to turn rankings into sales and page layouts and functionality to keep the users happy. Often SEO consultants will be more well rounded in their skill set, knowing abit about design and development from other colleagues in the office.

Pros

• Up to date on latest trends
• Focused on the overall success of your website
• Often well established with proven success
• Can provide design & development to support SEO

Cons

• Not as specialised on SEO as a boutique agency
• Design & development can sometimes hinder SEO success

In-House

In house SEO experts work well in highly specialised industries, they will know the companies market inside out. Having an in-house SEO expert can also mean that they are less current with their knowledge of search trends and updates, due to the lack of discussion between employees in the same job.

Pros

• Easy to communicate
• Greater knowledge of the business processes
• Dedicated to one business

Cons

• Less up-to-date knowledge of SEO
• Lack of resources for social media and link-building
• No one to discuss SEO related problems or ideas

Freelance

A freelance SEO consultant is usually up to date with the latest search trends and is highly specialised in their field. Dealing with a freelancer is more of a personal experience, since you will be talking and discussing with a single person everytime.

Pros

• Up to date SEO knowledge
• Care about their clients more as it is their personal reputation on the line
• Communication through a single person

Cons

• Lack of resources that agencies possess
• Often work part-time with no set working hours
• Work alone, so have no support or colleagues to discuss ideas and problems

Conclusion

So where should you turn to get your businesses ranking and performing well online? Well there is no real correct answer, only personal preference. If you are a large corporate company, generally an established digital agency due to their experience and resources or an in-house team. However, if you are a small or medium sized business, a freelancer or boutique agency may suit your needs better, especially if your after a more personal experience.

So you’ve created a masterpiece, optimized every last word and now your ready to publish that top quality piece of web content. You upload it to your website or blog and wait for the traffic to come pouring in, but it doesn’t. This is the mistake that many webmasters and bloggers make when publishing their content to the web. You could have the best content on earth, but it would be useless unless people are reading it. This is where promoting your content is essential for your work to be successful and not wasted.

Here are 8 ways in which you can promote your web content online: -

1. Writing a Tweet – Twitter is immensely powerful when used to promote content online. It has grown exponentially over the last year or so and now your hard pushed to find an established business not on it. A short sentence describing your content with a shortened link (Bit.ly or similar) is all you need to do, possibly repeating this several times over a few days
2. Posting on Facebook – Facebook is the most popular social networking platform on the web, creating and posting a link on your page will help let people know about your content.
3. Ping Your Blog – Pinging your blog using free services lets RSS readers and search engines know that you have updated your blog and invites the search engine crawlers to return to index your new content.
4. Digg it! – Digg.com is a social bookmarking system where you share links with the Digg community. If people like the link you shared they can Dig it and show you that they like it. Getting enough Digs sometimes gets you onto Digg’s homepage, which gives a PR8 back-link, tasty eh.
5. Commenting on Similar Blog Posts – Adding a follow on comment on a similar or related blog post giving your take or making a valuable addition to their post is generally welcomed. People often skim though the comments and if they come across a genuine, useful comment, they often follow the link
6. Send out an email to your subscribers – Often the CTR of email shots are small, but if you have a large enough email list, it can provide some good traffic and can often spread a link to your content on other blogs
7. Forum & Email signatures – If you find yourself emailing all day every day, adding a simple email signature will quickly spread your link to your recipients. The same works with forum posts. If you post regularly on forums, having a link to your content is another way of spreading the word.
8. Submit a link to StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon has over 5 Million registered users and can provide some good traffic over a reasonable period of time. If your content is favourited by users, it can give a real traffic boost.

There are hundreds of other ways you can promote your content online, gaining valuable backlinks and brand recognition. I recommend you make yourself a checklist of places to go to promote each and every blog post you make in order for them to have maximum effect.

If you found this blog post interesting or useful, please follow me on twitter: @webdevluke

Feel free to add any additional methods to promote your content in the comments.

Everyone loves a good contest, both the webmaster and the users. It brings a bucket full of backlinks, a healthy surge of traffic, some admiring subscribers and your viewers will kept happier. Everyone would love to win some awesome prizes for something that took them all of 30 seconds to do online. However, if your contest is not planned or run well, it could even reflect negatively on your blog/website.

When Should I Run My First Contest?

You should keep in mind what your current popularity on the web is. If you are only attracting 10 visitors a day, with a small social following, a contest is probably out of reach for you at this point. However, with reasonable traffic and a reasonable social following a contest can do wonders for your blog.

Other thoughts such as the length of the contest and when it should start and end should be taken into consideration. People are most likely to enter competitions as they near their end, therefore should be at a time that the most people are online, after work or on the weekend would be my recommendation.

What’s The First Step?

Well the first step to creating a great contest, is to secure some great prizes. No one will want to enter a contest where the top 3 prizes contain items that have been lying around in your garage. Your prizes should be appealing to the demographic your blog or website is targeting. If you run a blog on trainspotting, prizes such as limited edition model trains, railway sets, special train tickets, event tickets would be of interest to your viewers. However, these kind of prizes wouldn’t be so popular if you are running a technology or gaming blog for example.

There are only 2 ways to supply prizes for your contest, you supply them yourself or a sponsor supplies them. Now obviously the latter would be the favoured choice, however finding sponsors isn’t easy, but it is possible. You can start by skimming across the web for other contests, finding out who sponsored their prizes and get in contact yourself.

What Are You After?

The is a reason for every contest, even if it was just to entertain your viewers or to improve your brand identity, there will be a reason behind it. Make sure that you clearly decide what your goals are before you begin your contest. Here are some examples of goals: -

• Improve your Twitter following
• Increase Facebook likes
• Get lots of backlinks
• Add to your subscribers
• Promote your business

After setting out your goals, you need to decide how to measure the results. E.g. Aiming to achieve 500 Facebook likes, measuring before and after the contest to record the impact.

Make It Simple

When it comes to getting people to enter, it needs to be clear and simple. The world is moving fast and no one likes to wait for anything anymore. Making the competition entry process long and tedious will just put people off entering. Look back on your goals to decide how you would like your audience to enter. E.g. If you are after increasing your presence on Twitter, you could ask people to retweet a sentence with your @twittername & a hash tag relating to your competition.

“Hey @webdevluke I want to win an iPad! #webdevipad!”

Do You Want A Contest OR Competition?

Which would you prefer? A contest is probably less effort, but a competition gives the user the feeling they are more likely to win if they get the answer correct. The difference is a contest is randomly chosen from a list on entries and a competition is chosen from a list of entries who have answered a question correctly or submitted the best work etc.

Designing The Contest

Now obviously the promotion is what gets users to the contest originally, but it is the styling, ease of use, content and the overall appearance which attracts them in and makes them “need” to enter. So what are the key factors to address?

• Easy To Understand – Make sure that your contest is easy to understand how to enter, when it ends, what the prizes are.
• Easy To Share – Make it as easy as possible for your viewers to share your contest across many different social channels.
• Eye Catching – Make sure that the contest catches your eye, colour titles, great images and styled content
• Call To Action – Make the viewer feel like they need to enter the contest straight away

It is important to emphasise to the viewer what they could be winning and how they can enter, these should be the 2 main focal points on the page.

Promoting The Contest

Once your contest is sitting pleasantly and patiently, waiting to go live, everything is as perfect as you can make it. It is time to start promoting it. I would recommend trying to make some hype about the contest a week or so prior to the actual competition starting, this will give other blogs, forums, social networking profiles chance to mention and discuss your upcoming contest.

How do you create hype about your contest? It may not work as well as you hope, but you need to lead on your viewers, telling them about the upcoming competition, tell them what the prizes are. You should do this in stages, keep them guessing what the prizes are, then how & when they can enter. Push this news though your blog, social networking accounts, forums, social bookmarking, comment on other blogs, do whatever it takes to get your contest known. Hopefully from this, other blogs and forums will pick up about your contest and write about it themselves, linking back to you.

When it comes to actually promoting your contest, when you feel the time is right to release it, here is an example list of places to promote your contest.

• Social Networking
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
• Social Bookmarking
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Delicious
• Pinging Your Blog (RSS)
• Posting comments on related subjects
• Forum posts in relevant niche
• Newsletters
• Email and Forum Signatures
• Friends & Family

Summary

Overall contests are a very powerful way of achieving huge numbers of backlinks, social followers or likes and brand recognition over a short period of time. However, they need careful planning and a good backbone to run from.

If you found this blog post useful or interesting, please follow me: @webdevluke

Have you run any successful or unsuccessful contests? Please share your experiences