Do-it-yourself SEO, also known as DIY SEO, is one of the most popular phrases tossed around in small business as it relates to small businesses bootstrapping their own SEO efforts.

It seems like every few months I field an email or phone call where a small business has had some sort of prior experience with an SEO professional or agency.

Sometimes they are looking to perform their own SEO in house, or they want to discuss and understand whether their small business should perform DIY SEO or hire an SEO professional or agency.

Typically, their reason for calling me is to have Kickstart Commerce to perform a free SEO audit of their current website.

They either heard from another Kickstart Commerce customer of our free SEO audit service offering, or they were performing a DIY SEO or small business SEO services search online and found one of our website or blog search results.

I realize that offering free SEO audits are somewhat an opportunity for companies to try and take advantage of the offer, especially when they hide the fact that they are looking to perform DIY SEO.

For some, their hope is that I will give away the SEO farm without them having to pay one dime, while others are willing to pay Kickstart Commerce to perform audit findings and without much disagreement for pricing at all.

But today, I’ll share with you an experience that happened not too long ago with a company that had champagne taste on a sprite budget.

In short, this customer that wanted sound SEO and all the SEO trimmings, but was not willing to pay for the results they wanted.