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Some SEO companies that I know of either offer recommendations in written form, to be handed off to the developers to implement, while others actually get their hands dirty and make the changes for the client. I was hoping to poll our audience of SEO companies to see how they do it. Do you make the coding changes or just offer written recommendations or do you do both?
Here is a poll:
A HighRankings Forum thread asks which is best and what is the best strategy. To me, it depends on the site, the working relationship with the owner and the developers and the knowledge of the SEOs making the recommendations.
You do not have to be a programmer to know SEO and make recommendations. But to implement SEO changes, you do need to know some programming, at least HTML. Plus, there are often issues and constraints that third-party SEO companies are not aware of when they ask to make SEO changes to a site. A developer has more of an intimate relationship with the site, knowing the ins and outs of that site and if a recommendation would be easy, hard, quick, or hurtful to a site. The best of both worlds would be to get a developer who is well versed in SEO to maintain your site day in and day out. But that is often not the case.
So, take the poll above and let us know how your SEO company primarily handles this.
Forum discussion at HighRankings Forum.
Comments:
BonsaiJon
02/24/2009 01:47 pm
It should always be a mixture of both. Good SEO Companies also offer to train their clients, especially on On-Page SEO. Then again, it also depends on the contract, whether it's a one time thing (which I don't get) or an on-going, monthly contract.
KJ Rodgers
02/24/2009 02:45 pm
I agree with BonsaiJon. It should be a mixture of both.
No Name
02/24/2009 03:29 pm
First recomendations and then implement. But sometimes our clients has their own web developer company.
No Name
02/24/2009 03:36 pm
We at Rise Interactive usually provide recommendations for the client to implement. It is a challenge because often the developer "cannot find the time" to implement the changes or the project falls behind while we wait for them. We do offer to implement the changes at an extra charge but have to be extremely careful with that. The fear being that something "breaks" on the site and the company will hold us liable for lost business.
chis
02/24/2009 03:45 pm
All sites I do SEO for are sites that I actively manage for my clients anyway. Saying that, I'd be happy to offer advice if they had an existing design/development agency that they were happy with. The situation just hasn't occurred yet.
Ryan
02/24/2009 05:59 pm
Currently I do hands on work for small sites, but I have provided clients with strategy and recommendations in the past. You all make good points, and ultimately it depends on your clients’ needs, as well as your business model. You can choose to be a purely strategic, a non-execution SEO company, or staff developers to handle execution for clients. I also believe that smaller SEO project tend to be executed by the SEO company. There is less that can “break” on the site, and the client most likely won’t have a full time developer. With larger contracts, clients will have a development team and in many cases won’t share code control. Personally I’d rather move to more of a strategic model again. Too much hands on work limits the number of clients I can take on at one time.
No Name
02/24/2009 11:48 pm
The fact is that you should provide recommendations and shouldn't be coding, but finally end up doing both. IMHO, SEO is something that must start at the early beginning of developing a website and never ends, and therefore a good SEO must know almost everything. However, it's not his job to code. Unfortunately, in practice, a SEO ends up doing almost everything because -at least Spain- is not something people really knows how it works, and if you want to pay your bills you have to do things you shouldn't. I just hope SEO becomes in Spain as respected as it is in the USA now ASAP.
Rob Abdul
02/25/2009 01:50 pm
I manage my personal elite-batch of Clients that get my full attention. I am proactive to recommend, get approval and implement changes. I then via my employment manage several sites. I do often recommend changes, which tends to be to large companies who already have a web team who can implement recommendations. In once recent case they also had a third-part SEO company. I was shocked when I learnt how badly some SEO companies and in-the-dark they keep their Clients. Unless I’ve worked on a site form it conception I do not consider it my baby. Also when I do take-over a site I like to benchmark its KPI’s, Key performance indicators: unique visits, page views, time on site – before I take it over. So that I may allow myself to feel proud that the SEO/SEM work I have done has made a difference.