SEO - Why Should I hire when I can do it Myself?

[First Aid 10]

Just finished a Lunchtime Coffee and had an interesting talk with a colleague.............just want to share my thoughts.

 

I remember a few years ago watching my Local amateur Football team play every Sunday and they would bring along a professional photographer to take the photography. He would take a number of pictures and hand out a few business cards to everyone watching with a link to his website where you could view the thumbnails and download a high resolution image – for a hefty price.

Then appeared every Sunday a young college student with the same size camera, although she claimed she was not a professional photographer, she applied the same process of taking the pictures and handing out cards with a link to her website. The difference being is that she hosted the images on her cloud server and made them freely available. Her business was done by association with people and she had regular bookings from people who initially visited the website to view the images.

The Professional Photographer soon got the huff and walked off never to be seen again!

I think we are all in an age of ‘I can do it myself’ and even looking around the web there are some awesome websites that have been put together by people whose skills have never touched on web design fundamentals but they have taken the time to learn as much as needed to do the job.

With the recent Algorithm changes over the last few years it has made a lot of ‘website owners’ sit up and ask their SEO guru’s ‘what the hell is happening here!’ with the questioning and actually listening comes the learning and self belief................’I can do it myself’.

Everything has its day and I read daily that business’s that tend to take on board their own SEO Campaigns see a better result as they learn and fine tune the ‘mechanics’ but more importantly they know how much time and how much money they are spending on the campaign.

 

The SEO Specialists must have felt as good as Kodak did in the sixties – and today are in a similar position of feeling the pains of the Digital Memory Cards.

[DaFoot 10]

A lot web developers would be able to advise on SEO matters and I do believe that there are plenty of folks out there selling snake oil when it comes to SEO.

 

Sites I have bothered to put some effort into I have brought to (near) the top for relevant search terms. However I am a web developer so should be able to do that.

 

A well built site with good content will rank reasonably, however a lot of folks who build it themselves simply aren't aware what is and isn't built properly, they have no idea if their free site will work well across browsers etc etc. Stuff that web developers/designers that are any good will do as routine.

 

To an extent the same applies to SEO. You can do it yourself, but getting someone that knows the business would almost certainly yield better results. To a point.

[Bloomdido 10]

Most (small) businesses I work with don't have a clue about SEO, or even how their web site needs to be structured to be SEO friendly. They haven't even got Google Analytics installed, let alone are monitoring it. I give pointers on how they can do DIY SEO but it isn't acted upon. It's hard enough getting content from people.

[DaFoot 10]

... It's hard enough getting content from people.

Glad it's not just me that suffers on this bit!

[First Aid 10]

Glad it's not just me that suffers on this bit!

 

Ha!! Reminds me of an old story I read...............

 

Once upon a time in the days of the Dot com boom there was a company that started off as a scrawl on the back of a fag packet. The scrawl was later developed into a five year plan. Venture capitalists loved the plan and gave the two young founders £5 Million to develop the company in the first year. The inexperienced pair immediately spent half this cash on a deposit for a trendy office in Soho. They spent the rest on a daily supply of organic fruit for their staff.

 

The founders claimed organic fruit helped their staff think creatively. The founders also splashed out on a lavish launch party at an upmarket City wine bar. They also caught the imagination of the Media and got glowing write ups in the business press. But less than six months after the company launched it became clear it wasn't meeting sales targets. The founder's couldn't understand why people didn't want to buy "Stuff" on line. The original backers were getting nervous and the company was running out of cash. The founders took a radical decision:

 

 

they stopped the deliveries of organic fruit!

[Ghozer 112]

a lot of the problem is time, people don't always have the time to dedicate to SEO as it is an on going process, that takes months to do it properly, and you have to keep it up also, keep the content fresh, tweak and update the website as new standards come out (like from HTML4 to HTML5 etc)

 

updating the news, changing content, keeping it submitted to websites, keeping sitemaps and link backs fully working and error free..

 

there's much more work involved in doing SEO properly than people often realise, and it's this time that people pay others for...

[Bloomdido 10]

Glad it's not just me that suffers on this bit!

 

I just offered to write the content for a client, who has been going to do it for months, (for a 'small' fee) and he bit my hand off.

 

a lot of the problem is time, people don't always have the time to dedicate to SEO as it is an on going process, that takes months to do it properly, and you have to keep it up also, keep the content fresh, tweak and update the website as new standards come out (like from HTML4 to HTML5 etc)

 

updating the news, changing content, keeping it submitted to websites, keeping sitemaps and link backs fully working and error free..

 

there's much more work involved in doing SEO properly than people often realise, and it's this time that people pay others for...

 

I agree. As I said, most people don't have a clue about how it works and leave themselves wide open to being ripped off. As you say, it's not something that can be done and then left alone. I am still learning the tools of the trade but am getting clients on to page 1 of Google fairly easily. It's the combination of keywords that I am trying to determine, finding out which ones my sites lack and then going back to modify the content.

[stimpy 10]

To a point, i agree with the op... And some of the comments! Lol

 

It isnt some voodoo magic and if you can invest the time into learning and understanding it, then why not... Afterall its how the seo guys did it!

 

I have done this with alot of things. From mechanical things through to computers, i sat down, did my reasearch and gave it a go.

[Domvoi 10]

I think Ghozer has got the point to a tee. It's not difficult to do SEO - as with everything; it's easy when you know how and yes you can learn how to do it, however, it's really worth paying someone to do it for their time. It really can be a time-sucking, mind-numbing task at times and can be a more effective use or resources to pay someone else to do it if your time is better spent elsewhere.

[anywebsite 10]

Depends whether you want to concentrate on running your business or spend a lot of time learning SEO for your single website & then put up with the results of the mistakes you'll make along the way.

 

You could paint your own sign for your shop, but I don't see sign-writers going out of business. You could do your own accounts, but there are still plenty of accountants. There are a lot of things to do when you start up or are running a business, you can't do everything perfectly yourself & you wouldn't have the time even if you could, so it's often sensible to pay specialists.

Edited September 5, 2012 by anywebsite

[First Aid 10]

You could paint your own sign for your shop, but I don't see sign-writers going out of business. You could do your own accounts, but there are still plenty of accountants. There are a lot of things to do when you start up or are running a business, you can't do everything perfectly yourself & you wouldn't have the time even if you could, so it's often sensible to pay specialists.

 

So True! But believe in the thick of the recession people will look and analyse their business and will put on the 'have a go' hat!!!

 

In view of the recent penguin update a lot of customers have been unhappy with the SEO services they have received and only now start to question the ROI where previously if their website was bringing in the money they didnt see it as much of a problem what they where paying their SEO guys!!

[anywebsite 10]

Only bad SEOs get hurt by Google updates. If you stop getting results & your website falls off the face of Google because your SEO guy tried some underhand tactics then you're doing worse than wasting your money.