Internet’s easy accessibility has no doubt encouraged starting of your online business to a great extent now. Nevertheless, to let people know about its existence still poses a big issue, no matter how artfully you might have created its website and launched it with so much fanfare. To begin with, yours is not a brick and mortar store located on a street corner with attractive show windows displaying the merchandise offered for sale, but has a website that must be optimized thoroughly so that visitors can locate it easily on the World Wide Web.

But this where you meet your first obstacle because you are probably unaware of which way to proceed. To be precise, you have three options to choose from in this regard – (a) Procure SEO Software from the market and try to implement it in a step-by-step process; (b) Hire a SEO Consultant and proceed according to his/her advice and (c) Appoint a full fledged SEO company to optimize your site. Now, let us take a peek at each of these search engines optimizing process and take the decision.

Off the Shelf SEO Software

Most off-the-shelf SEO software are not only very pricy but also are quite bulky to use while many of their features are not needed for your near or future use. Besides, they get outdated pretty fast ands so creates more issues than privileges. The picture has turned really serious after the recent Google Penguin updates that condemn most SEO processes which were considered normal earlier.

Interestingly enough, even though many post-Penguin SEO software have been provided with tools to cope with the new regulations, some of these appear to be designed to take advantage of the so called loops in the Google’s faultless system, thereby gaining better rank, only to be punished at a later date.

Hiring an SEO Consultant

It’s almost like jumping from frying pan to fire!  At $200 to $300 an hour an SEO Consultant will try to convince you about the importance of On-Page Optimization or other technical jargon that are beyond the vocabulary of average small or medium business person. That’s precisely why small business owners and/or their webmaster tend to reap very little or no benefit from casual one day or two-day SEO Consultation.

Nevertheless, some small business owners consider hiring the services of a SEO consultant to be the cheapest way of optimizing their website in the vain hope that the magical touch of the consultant will do the job, little knowing that SEO is an ongoing process.

However, SEO Consultation on a long–term basis will be ideally suited to any startup venture, provided it can afford such an expensive process for an indefinite period of time. In that case, the SEO Consultant can go through and advise all the SEO stages and implement them stage-by-stage. But as I said, it may be too expensive for a startup yet abandoning it midway can be disastrous for the client.

Hiring a SEO Company to Optimize the Website

Certain jobs, especially those that are tricky and thorny are better done when entrusted to professionals. Search Engine Optimization is no DIY job that can be accomplished by someone who is not fully familiar with all the technicalities that are related to optimization of a website. Moreover, it involves thorough analysis of the client’s business trends because the SEO has to be tailored according to those. Mind you, SEO for X would be different for Y. Also, in the long run, it will prove quite cost effective and beneficial for most businesses.