Should Retailers Hire Search Engine Optimization Experts?

by John and Jake Fell Mar 23, 2015

Q: I’m solicited on a regular basis by SEO companies that promise they can have my site rank at the top of search engines. Should I be paying an SEO specialist to get more organic visits to my website?

John Fell: Search engines have economic incentives to provide useful organic search results to users and regularly change algorithms to prevent SEO specialists from gaming the system. SEO companies and SEO specialists that sell a magical formula to put your business on the front page of Google are at best over-promising, and at worst lying about their capabilities.

The good news is that search engines truly want to help their users find the best solution to consumer problems and questions. In other words, if you offer the quality, ambiance, products and services in the community that someone is looking for, search engines have an economic motivation to direct consumers searching for the those attributes to you.

For example, if a fashionable consumer in New Orleans and searches “best custom suits New Orleans,” search engines have every incentive to help the executive by displaying organic search results highlighting the best custom suit retailers in New Orleans.

To achieve optimal search engine optimization, it’s best to be authentic and curate a positive online representation of what your brand really is. Don’t resort to gimmicks or gaming. Use modern cross channel marketing best practices, such as:

  • Have a fundamentally good website with sound coding. Search engines may think your business is obsolete if your website is old, has bad code, is incomplete or has broken links.
  • Have a mobile friendly website. Search engines provide higher rankings to websites that are mobile friendly.
  • Have a blog on your website. Write blog posts regularly and incorporate keywords that prospective customers will likely use to search for areas you excel at (here’s a link to more tips for content marketing).
  • Use social media. Have links to your social media pages on your website and update your social media content regularly.
  • Monitor your presence on online review sites. Search engines provide higher rankings to companies that have positive ratings on online review sites, like Yelp and Google+. Regularly check review sites and make sure customers are leaving positive reviews about your business. Publicly reply to negative reviews by apologizing and offering to fix a customer’s bad experience.