Is Make it Active is a Good SEO Company?

There are a few steps you can take to find out if an SEO company is good and will do the job that you are paying them to do. Here are a few ways to know how we do when it comes to SEO, which you could use to find out if the SEO company you're working with is good at what they do.

• Read through our case studies. We have real-world examples of how we helped clients to achieve their goals.
• Read our reviews. We have reviews right on Google from customers that know the quality of the work we perform.
• Do some searches: One way to know a good SEO company is doing some generic searches for the company's offering in their region. For example, if you search "NH seo company." Check the search pages and review the first 2-3 pages. I am willing to bet we come up there (if not, we might look pretty foolish saying this, but, we're pretty sure we're there). Why is this a big deal? Because we didn't start our business here until the end of 2015. We relocated from across the country, and despite competing with businesses that have been offering SEO in NH for decades, we started getting ranked higher than our competitors in less than a year.
• At the time of writing this, we haven't even checked if we are ranking high with nh seo company, but, we are confident that we are. In fact, our competitors made us more confident than ever! How? Well, some competitors are so bad at what they do, instead of relying on a skill set that helps grow businesses, they rely on underhanded dirty tricks of the trade. Fortunately for us, we partner with Google, obey the rules, and are able to detect when people use dirty tricks against us, as well as tricks that violate google rules. Because of that, we're careful and naturally rank high because we do things the right way. We don't believe in tricks, and have seen the consequences of doing things that way by working with clients who once were customers of some of these competitors. We are confident in our abilities to succeed for our clients, and don't need to use dirty SEO tricks to help us succeed.
• Sign up for one of our no-contract SEO plans, try us out for a month or 2, and decide for yourself. It's pretty simple. If you are happy, and we have shown we work well with you, you can remain our client. If we don't do the job that you expected of us, you can try another company and there will be no bad feelings. We understand that everyone works differently, and we truly do care about our clients and doing what is right when it comes to using quality, sound marketing techniques.

Is SEO necessary for success?

SEO is the very important to success in business. However, Instead of focusing on our successes, I am actually going to focus on one of our failures as a business. As a business, you should diversify your marketing expenditures to help grow the business and build brand recognition. In order for a business to be successful, you should never "put all your eggs in one basket." At least, that's the conventional wisdom. Unfortunately, this is an area that we have failed at for our own business, now going on 4 years in a row...

In 2015, when Make it Active, LLC relocated to New Hampshire, it was our intention to focus on every aspect of both online and traditional marketing. After all, I always speak about the importance of diversifying marketing strategies to my clients, so I couldn’t let our business focus on one area, risking catastrophic failure. We have spent countless hours on search engine optimization, and little else. We have created ads, wonderful graphics that are ready to print, and lots of ideas as to what types of advertisements we were going to invest in. Unfortunately, I have consistently failed to advertise our business, year after year, since relocating to NH. As of the time this was written in late September, 2018, we have not advertised at all. We have relied solely on Search Engine Optimization as a means to grow our business... Update on October 20th, 2019: We still haven't advertised!

Has our business suffered? Unfortunately, it is likely it has. Surely we could have grown faster in the same amount of time by doing some advertising. Has our business been a catastrophic failure? Unless you consider growing at a rate of 1400% a failure, no, our business has not been a catastrophic failure. In fact, we have had great success, and have continued growing each year from our humble new beginnings here in Dover, NH.

Our point with all this is that you should diversify your marketing strategies, and you should not follow our mistakes and ignore certain aspects that will help your company grow. But on that same point, you should also stop ignoring the importance of SEO. Think about this: If our primary means of growth as a small business has simply been growing the traffic on our website through SEO, it should demonstrate the importance of SEO in business growth.

This isn’t just about our story; We have a few case studies on our website, and have worked with many clients over the years, watching them grow at a fast rate due to our experience with SEO.. People rely on the internet to find a business. Don't you? When you want coffee, pizza, or are looking for a restaurant, chances are, you pick up your phone to search. If not, you still have the need to recognize that most consumers find businesses this way. It is time to start utilizing the internet to grow your business, and not simply be a required expense.

Our goal for 2019 is to start focusing more on advertising. Your goal should be to divert more of your marketing budget to SEO and Online Marketing. You won’t regret it.

Should I hire a Local SEO Consultant or a Search Marketing Agency?

If you read any of our frequently asked questions about SEO, this is the one you should read. Recently we were looking to hire a new accountant for our business and personal returns. When it comes to spending money, I am pretty frugal... Actually, I'm downright cheap. I don't like spending money on things that don't provide a return on investment. So, I understand when people look for deals, or are hesitant about spending money; especially when it comes to costs that are newer to many companies, such as SEO and online marketing. Unfortunately for me, competent and knowledgeable tax professionals are ones that cost more. I didn't want to admit it, and my wife pointed out the fact that we can't expect to be cheap if we want to ensure everything is done correctly and we maximize our savings. So I thought about this recently when speaking with a potential client about our no contract SEO services.

The client felt our prices were good, but was struggling to decide which plan to use because they had previously used an SEO consultant that was cheaper, but yielded no results. That's the catch, right there, and I reminded them that they paid the same SEO company for a few years, but got no results, so why would they want to repeat that mistake with another unproven SEO consultant? If someone is good at what they do, they are not going to do it cheap. SEO takes time. The time to do SEO work for the average client is about 2-3 hours per week (8-12 hours per month). If someone is charging $100 or $200 per month to do that; do you think they are actually working for you for as little as $10 an hour? Rather, do you realize that they are likely just discounting their rate to get enough clients to pay their bills? I'm sure some of you reading this have figured it out already, if someone is undercharging you, they are not as good as they claim to be. Why else would they work for $10-$20 an hour only to have the headache of doing taxes as a consultant every year?

Furthermore, if you take a second to check the content of some of these small SEO consultants, you will find things that demonstrate that they are a liability as well. I have actually found local companies that are violating copyright by using content that we have had in place for a decade or more. Our work is all protected by copyright, and all of it has a historical record. If they were good at SEO, they would not need to take other's content. If they do it to us, what do you think they will do for your business? Can you afford the additional cost when you have been found to be violating another company's copyright?

How long do you think these SEO consultants will be in business? This is another question you need to ask. One of our clients hired us because their previous "SEO professional" quit doing website design and SEO because he started delivering pizza's. Now we always joke with the client that if we don't do well on their project, we can always ask them what they want on their pizza... Fortunately, we have done well to keep them as a client, so no pizza deliveries any time soon. We love pizza, don't get us wrong. But SEO and online marketing is not a hobby or a job for us; it's a career; one that we have been doing since 1994.

The simply truth is, you get what you pay for. While we are not the cheapest out there, we are very reasonable and have a long history of being SEO Professionals, have been featured on FOX Business and FOX News, and have received awards, and recognition for our efforts, including from Google. So that's what you get when you hire Make it Active, LLC to do your online marketing, rather than hiring an SEO consultant.

How Much Should SEO Cost?

When it comes to SEO, one question that I am sure get's asked a lot is about how much SEO should cost. It's a simple question, but like many things, it requires a complex answer. While this is an oversimplification, it is true, nonetheless - there are 3 types of SEO Companies:

• Cheap: These are companies offering SEO results for under $100 or $200 per month.
• Mid-range: These are companies that offer SEO packages that range in price, depending on the time needed for the campaign.
• High-end: These are the companies that charge thousands and offer a dedicated project manager, and provide constant reporting to the company.