There are many options when you’re considering online marketing for your website. Unfortunately, not all SEO companies produce the long-term, strategic results that you would expect to receive from your investment. In fact, the size and name recognition of the company you’re dealing with may not matter.
What you don’t realize when you sign up for some of these large, well-known, national companies is that they are going to develop a second website in addition to the one you already have.
In essence, they create a duplicate of your original website using a subdomain, or an entirely different domain, and use it to measure and manage their pay per click campaign. This practice provides no long-term value for your main website and leaves you with nothing when you cancel your service with them.
What to be on the look out for when choosing an online marketing company
- From an SEO standpoint, you should not have two websites up for the same domain. Google might look at this as you trying to game your search results and may penalize both sites from appearing in search engines. The result is that your main website drops in search engine rankings and your new, duplicated site with the SEO company doesn’t rank well because it is a clone of your main site.
- It puts you at risk for breach. If your website hosts any secure forms, such as an online appointment request or bill pay, duplicating your site may leave you at risk for a possible breach of ePHI which is in violation of HIPAA.
- SEO companies that don’t know what they’re doing use pay per click campaigns to overcome the mess they create. Not to say that paid ads can’t be effective, they can! But in many competitive geographic areas, they don’t work well because the cost for your click is too much for your return. When you take the campaign down, you have nothing to show for.
Unfortunately, a few of our clients have signed up with these large companies thinking they were going to see quick results. What these companies did was essentially create a mess that takes countless hours to fix. Our clients waste a great deal of money, not only for the actual campaign by the SEO company, but also for us to clean things up.
At Practis, we work hard to ensure our clients do well and see long-term results. If you are considering online marketing, please call Practis first.
