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DIY SEO?
"SEO is easy, right? Just simply Google a few tutorials on how to "Do-it-yourself" and away you go...!"
This is simply not the case! Achieving, and maintaining high search engine rankings can be a lot of hard work even when you know what you are doing. Despite the fact that search results will often provide conflicting information over what are the best techniques to use, some of the articles and information will give outdated techniques, because the author might not fully understand SEO, or, because you have come across an old article. The more competitive the industry--competitive is not simply defined by the number of people in your industry, but by the number of people in your industry who focus heavily on internet marketing for their websites--the more important it is to use every effective technique available to give your business a competitive edge.
Added to this, in order to achieve the best results, it's not enough to only rely on traditional SEO to drive business to your website; rather a mix of other website promotion techniques is preferable.
But DIY SEO will save me money!
Will it really?
Unless you are lucky, or you have little or no competition for your website, it is unlikely that DIY SEO is going to give you the real benefits you need to succeed in effectively promoting your website. Some website owners look at it as a cost saving exercise, but it often ends up costing your business considerably more than you save, due to loss of business while you are trying to get your website where you want it to be.
Without the expertise necessary to understand SEO properly, considerably more time will be spent trying to keep up-to-date with constant changes affecting SEO and website promotion, than if a professional were doing it for you. It means you will be distracted from what you do best - running your business.
The easiest way to work this out is to assess what you are worth on an hourly basis, times that by the amount of hours you will need to spend researching and implementing the changes, and compare that to the cost of what a professional SEO company will charge you... and probably do it more effectively.
If SEO is done incorrectly, you risk having your site banned from Google or pushed so far down the list that it might as well not exist in the search engine rankings. How much would that cost your business? The number of people using the internet constantly increases, and you can be fairly sure that if you aren't appearing somewhere high up in the search results, customers will be finding your competitors instead.
A great example of why DIY is not a great idea:
A beauty salon called us as they were having problems with their site rankings. Previously they had been No.1 for a top ranked phrase in Google, and then about a year ago their website dropped below the No.150 position. They were hoping with a quick phone call I could advise them how to fix it themselves.
While there were a few obvious problems with the way the site was structured and the way the SEO was done, it is still not a quick process to properly determine all the reasons why the site hasn't been ranking well. Not only does the website itself need to be considered, but external factors such as:
- External links
- Your competition
- The impact of Google updates during that time
Google updates often cause a drop in rankings as Google improve their search results to make sure the most relevant sites are displayed in their search results.
Despite the fact that this salon heavily relied on business coming through the search engines, and, having had this problem for twelve months, they still wanted to try and fix the site themselves rather than have it professionally done. The amount of lost revenue to this business in that time would far outweigh the cost of paying a professional SEO company to do it for them. In Conclusion
Whether you are capable of doing the SEO well, or not, the question you need to ask yourself is; "Is this risk worth it to my business, and will doing this take me away from what I do best, and so in fact cost me more?"
About The Author
Andrew Seidel is the Managing Director of Quantum Web Solutions. Andrew and the team specialise in SEO and Web Design in Sydney.
Previously on SearchEngineChannel
- A Bargain Hunter's Guide to SEO
- Generating Free Traffic Hits - Getting Targeted Site Traffic Using Articles
- Search Engine Optimization Google Style
- Increase Traffic To Your Website...
- Why do the majority of SEO campaigns fail?
- Link Building Isn't Everything It's Made Out To Be
- How to Attain Improved Search Engine Rank
- Relevant Content Brings Quality Traffic
- How To Roll Out Your SEO Link Campaign Like a Red Carpet
- Back links - what are they, why do I need them, and how to get them?
