Question from a dentist: I had a wonderful website made about 6 months ago, but am now looking for a company to do my online marketing/SEO. I’ve contacted some marketing companies, and they all say that in order to do SEO, you have to let them build the website. I am reluctant to do this because I just paid a good amount of money for the website.
My answer: If your website is built on a proprietary platform owned by an agency, you will most likely be unable to work with marketing companies outside of that agency. In these cases, the agency has effectively locked you into their platform, meaning you can only use their marketing services.
Similarly, if you’re interviewing an agency that owns a proprietary web platform, they will almost certainly require you to rebuild your website on their system. That means you lose your existing website. This is known as vendor lock-in, and it’s something I consistently caution against because it limits your freedom, flexibility, and ability to change vendors.
On the other hand, if you have a solid website — one built using modern techniques, industry standards, and an open (non-proprietary) platform like WordPress — you should not need to rebuild your site just to do marketing or SEO. WordPress is the most widely used website platform, and many SEO and marketing specialists work with it daily. In most cases, all a specialist needs is access to your website (and sometimes your hosting account) to add marketing content, create new pages, and perform their work effectively.
In fact, this is the approach we encourage for our clients. We would recommend a marketing specialist, and many of our clients, after building a website with us, go on to work successfully with our referrals or other specialists of their choice. If a marketing company has questions or needs additional access, they simply reach out. This collaborative model works well and keeps the client in control.
I strongly advocate for this approach because it allows you to switch vendors as needed. You can move your website to a different hosting provider if pricing or performance becomes an issue. You can make updates yourself if you don’t want to rely on a developer. You can also change marketing companies, test different strategies, and see what truly works.
Many marketing companies promise results and present impressive metrics, but results today don’t always guarantee consistent performance a year or two from now. Having the freedom to pivot is critical. That freedom only exists when your website is built and hosted independently of your marketing company. They can access your site to do their work, but you remain in control of that access and of the website itself.
While it may be more profitable for marketing agencies to keep clients on proprietary platforms and charge agency markups, it’s important to evaluate what is truly cost-effective and sustainable for you — not just in the short term, but long term as well.