Small SEO firms and freelancers against the giants of the CEO of business, who will win?

Let's look at things soberly: any company (large or small) will first of all care about how to make money for yourself, and not about the profit that their client will receive.

of course, depending on the scheme of work, if the work includes% of what the client earns, then the interest is different.

It is quite obvious that their success depends on the success of their client, but nevertheless the success of the client is a minor task compared to its own benefit.

Any company cares about the success of its customers as long as it is profitable for them. And it is quite understandable and normal. But now it is important for us to understand, these seemingly quite ordinary concepts.

Below, in my article, I will refer to them repeatedly.

Well, the last before the start. Yes, I am the director of a small SEO workshop, or, if you like, a company.

You may think that this article is very subjective and I am trying to lobby my business. You have the right to do so. Personally, I think everything that is written in this article is true.

Well, "pure truth" is a concept that does not exist, so the article has a color of subjective assessment, IMHO.

Flexibility (quick response to changes and adaptability to new circumstances) gives an advantage in search engines.

SEO market is a zone of high competition. The most important thing in SEO is the result.

It doesn’t matter what you measure your performance — income, conversion, page impressions, etc. — the only thing you really need is strong performance.

SEO - drive traffic, targeted traffic. And the first positions in search results for "good" requests are guaranteed to attract a lot of targeted traffic.

I believe that the author under the "good" requests had not only traffic-generating or HF requests, namely, selling, targeted.

Therefore, SEO - is the eternal search for some tools, tools, information, etc., in general, all that would give an advantage over competitors.

For large companies, the introduction of some innovations or changes is a long and problematic process, I know about the case when one very large and well-known SEO company needed to make changes to the robots.txt files and the "title" tags on the sites they served, such as at first glance, the simple procedure stretched out for almost a year (yes, it was really!) for independent SEO specialists (freelancers) who work with a relatively small number of sites, making such changes on their sites would in the worst case just a few about days.

Yes, in fact, the approval process in large companies, especially international ones, can take many months or even years. In my experience of working with an international company, I can say one thing: we already draw simple action for 1 year and 6 months. This is a real, hard case.

Same with small SEO firms. Imagine the very real situation that tomorrow Google or some other search engine will amend its ranking algorithms, who will be able to respond to the changes faster and adapt their projects for them: a freelancer (or a small SEO office with a staff of up to 15 people) or some is an SEO corporation with a staff of 300 people.

Another advantage of small SEO firms is narrowly focused specialization. Typically, such offices are promoting in one type of search: local SEO, real-time search, search for online stores (CSEs), mobile search, etc.

Such narrowly focused specialization gives a huge advantage, as the company becomes a professional in its type of search, and can more effectively provide promotion services.

Quite different is the situation with large SEO firms, they offer a very wide range of promotion services, wanting to capture as many clients as possible, and at the same time they cannot be professionals in all areas of the search, respectively, the quality of work done is lower.

The above is one of the most controversial points in the article, since not every freelancer or small company has the resources to test new algorithms (both human and material resources.

To be a professional in something, you need to think "deeply" and not "broadly." They think wide, not deep.

SEO is changing

With the increasing popularity of Internet search, the SEO industry is also growing.

I still remember the days when SEO was the lot of the elect that search engine optimization was known only among webmasters, and for the "external" world this activity was, if known, mysterious and associated with spam.

Now everything is different any marketer is well aware of what SEO is , and some even know the basics of promotion.

Such dynamic growth of the industry has somewhat changed the balance of power in the market, if we try to depict it on a graph, we will get a curve, at one end of which will be gurus and top-class specialists who are theorists and the main source of information (brain center), in the middle most of -Specialists, in general, all those who are involved in the business and SEO for them routine daily work (the largest part of the industry), in the opposite end, various SEO rogues, all those who use illegal methods of promotion I, spammers, hackers and other "dark" personalities.

Generally. SEO is now going through all the stages that any other industry in its formation.

Big fish share their prey with a small one.

With the spread of SEO to the entire Internet ecosystem (every year there are fewer and fewer sites that have not been optimized or promoted), many web studios collaborate with small SEO workshops or individual freelancers.

Often, customers ordering a website want it to be optimized and move along with the necessary requests, so that high attendance would be, and since web studios cannot cope with this task on their own, they refer clients to the seo specialists "from the outside", naturally getting paid for it some kind of percentage. This system works successfully, and suits everyone: customers, web studios, SEO-shnik.

In the world of advertising, quite often huge advertising companies resort to the services of small studios when they need new fresh ideas, or for a VIP client to execute an exclusive order.

Only small studios have creativity, innovative technologies, an individual approach to solving each task. In large companies, everything is put on the conveyor, and as a result, cheap (or not cheap) consumer goods.

Unfortunately, small companies often underestimate their services, to a greater extent this is due to their own inferiority complex, mistakenly believing that large firms do their job better.

From my experience with different companies (both with those that are engaged in web design, and large optimizing companies), the situation is similar in the market of SEO services.

Still, I would even say that the SEO market is becoming more democratic, large companies specialize in all types of promotion, now they are combined under the name integrated Internet marketing .

Small firms are simply not physically able to concentrate their forces to advance in all directions.

Another advantage of cooperation with small companies is that you know exactly who is involved in your site , if you want his work history and achievements, and other indicators of professionalism.

At any time you can contact him to find out how the work is progressing, ask questions that interest you.

In large companies, with hundreds of staff, you may not even know who specifically worked on your project. And most importantly, do not underestimate your work.

SEO and company business model

In my opinion, a real seo professional (I also call them veterans of seo front) will never work in a large seo company, and will rarely have a full-time job in a web studio, they usually choose another form of work: they have their own small companies, or work in freelancing, or lead their own or partner projects.

First of all, this is due to the level of income; incomes of promoters in large companies are the lowest in the whole industry. A true professional will not work for a penny.

What I have noticed is that small elite companies, with a friendly, cohesive team, cope with the task assigned faster than large companies. Small firms are more mobile, flexible, objective and motivated.

They work with a small number of customers, so each victory, each "achievement" on a special account. All this testifies to the fact that the model of a small SEO studio is the most effective in this business, both for clients and for optimizers.

Large companies in their work rely on some kind of mathematical calculations, trying to automate the process of promotion as much as possible, work according to template schemes, etc.

In general, everything looks like a big conveyor. I have no doubt that among their employees there are professionals.

But they are trying to use them for the benefit of their own company, and newcomers are involved in customer projects, which require a minimum of professionalism.

Market specialization

SEO has matured since it originated in the middle of the '90s, and will undoubtedly continue to grow.

It becomes obvious that with the advent of new types of search, SEO goes to a new level, gaining more and more popularity. If we talk about the popularity of SEO, then it should be noted that the services of optimizers are resorted to such well-known companies such as Microsoft, the New York Times newspaper, Amazon online store and others.

Some want to increase their sales with the help of SEO, while others just want to attract visitors to their site, in each case an individual approach is needed.

SEO is not a pipeline!

The stronger the specialization of the market for SEO services (division into various types of search), the more large companies will turn to small firms for promotion services in one or another kind of search.

We can already observe the narrowly specialized orientation of some SEO companies for some specific type of search, and in the future this gradation will be even greater. With such a balance of power, the advantage will be natural for small seo firms.

Whatever happens, one thing I know for sure: I will always “restrain” the size of my company, so that it is compact, mobile and efficient!