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By Angela Charles
President, Pilot Fish
Copyright © 2008

Many companies have IT staff with a wide range of technical expertise in all things computer-related. Not wanting to give up the cost and control advantages of using in-house personnel, businesses rely on their IT folks to build and maintain their web sites.

At some point, however, one must evaluate the advantages of managing the web site internally against the expertise afforded by outsourcing to a third-party SEO and web design firm.

Here are some issues to consider when weighing the benefits of internal web site management vs. outsourcing for SEO and web design:

• Search Engine Optimization: Getting your site to perform on major search engines so that prospects can easily find your company has become more challenging as the search engines continue to alter the way they rank sites. Companies that specialize in search engine optimization have invested many hours of research in understanding the intricacies of search engine positioning and are best positioned to help a site earn and maintain top positioning.
• Keyword Selection: How much traffic comes to your site and how many qualified leads your site generates largely is a function of your site being found by the right people. Most businesses can be described by a number of similar terms. The key to Internet marketing success is knowing which terms are being used by most of your target audience. SEO firms perform research to identify the right terminology your site content should focus on for best results.
• Universal Website Design: One of the things oftentimes forgotten by internal web site staff is that site visitors likely will be viewing the company's web site using a variety of web browsers. Site designs need to be tested in multiple browsers (which may not be available to an internal IT staff) to be sure that the site can be used by anyone who gets to the site.
• Content Development: Company IT staffs are great at tackling the technical side of web site management, but they usually lack marketing knowledge and Internet writing experience to help the organization determine what type of content would be most successful in generating leads.
• Link Building: The success of your company web site in search engine positioning lies in part with its ability to generate good incoming links. This is a marketing function that is new and unique to the Internet, meaning that your company likely has no internal personnel who have the knowledge to develop and execute a successful link-building strategy.

The overall success of your website depends on how well each of these areas is executed. If you don't have internal personnel with these skills and experience, it's time to outsource the design and search engine optimization of your web site.

Angela Charles is president of Pilot Fish, an Akron, Ohio, search engine optimization and web design firm specializing in business-to-business clients.