We’re back in the saddle for another fun-filled post about SEO and doing it yourself.

Do-it-yourself SEO or DIY SEO, as it is also known as, can be quite an experience for the small business owner looking to take matters of SEO into their own hands.

Whether you have had a good or bad experience with SEO, in general, there is always a thought that crosses one’s mind that they too could optimize their website to rank well in search engines just as good as, if not better than, SEO professionals.

In addition to performing small business SEO for multiple customers, I’ve experience coaching and consulting a fair share to do SEO themselves.

Some small business owners take to SEO coaching and consulting like a fish to water and succeed in learning, executing and sustaining sound SEO strategies and tactics to keep their websites highly visible and ranked in major search engines.

But with the good also comes the bad who were too smart for their own good, and stepped on the dark side of SEO due to being impatience, naïve or outright shrewd.

And for their unjust actions, they make their way back to me or another SEO professional, endlessly pleading with us to rescue their website from black-hat SEO snares, or penalization or de-indexation of their website in search engines.

I proclaim that anyone can learn do-it-yourself SEO and find success or failure doing so.

But where most small business owners go wrong is not truly considering all facets of do-it-yourself SEO in its entirety.

Most of the time, the do-it-yourself SEO approach is entered into blindly based on small business owners not having adequate resources as it relates to time, money and labor or effort.

And just like you need the S and E and O to spell SEO, you also need to have time, money and effort to invest in an ongoing SEO.

So before you launch into do-it-yourself SEO, let’s take a moment to discuss some common do-it-yourself SEO pitfalls, so you can thoroughly understand the pros and cons of do-it-yourself SEO before causing great harm to your business and having to call the SEO professionals in to clean up the mess.

I’m constantly asked about the length of time it takes to see SEO results and why results cost so much.

It’s to the point that I now start most conversations by informing the customer that it take anywhere from 1 hour to years to see SEO results. 

Based on the website health and a long list of various SEO attributes, customers could see positive or even negative SEO results immediately.

So there, I said it. You can expect to see positive or even negative SEO results immediately.

The irony in making such a broad, sweeping statement is that neither party has an accurate definition of “immediately”, nor can either party definitively express in great clarity what “SEO results” are and are not.

This lack of clear definition and communication by SEO professionals typically sets the unrealistic expectation in both time and results for most website owners.

And confusion enters amongst a twisted he said, she said game of trying to figure out whether SEO results were delivered as promised and on time.

At least a few times a month, I receive a call from a small business owner who is frantic about the state of their business.

When asking small business owners what their greatest problem is with their business, most of the time I’m told, “Our website is losing search ranking, and we’re losing traffic and business because of it.”

In most cases, unbeknownst to the small business owner, the nosedive in both search rankings and website traffic can be attributed to search engine updates, more specifically a Google update.

And if not a search engine update, then because they participated in some dubious behavior to game search engines in an attempt to garner search rankings and increase website traffic.

So I circle the wagon once more and ask the small business owner, “What is your business plan? How do you get traffic to your business?”

Whether by accident or purposely not renewing domain names, owners will neglect to renew domain names if they are careless. 

Have you ever forgotten to renew a domain or lost ownership of domain names?

I can’t say that I have personally had the experience of losing ownership of a domain name due to inaccurate contact information or credit card information on file for the domain or outright theft.

However, I’ve read a number of stories where owners have committed the following errors:

• forgotten to update their contact information
• forgotten to update their credit card information for an expired credit card
• did not enable or set their domains to auto renew
• turned off their renewal notification emails

You name it, and I’ve read or know someone who has experienced it at one point in the many years of owning and developing domain names into viable businesses.

Ever so often I receive an email inquiring about a lost domain name that an inquirer states they were the previous owner.

Exact match domains (EMD) is a difficult conversation to have for many website owners, developers and SEO professionals.

Each has their own isolated experiences of success and failure when using exact match domains, both pre and post Google EMD update.

If you don’t know about the Google EMD update, then I suggest you do a little reading on how Google released an exact match domains update.

In short, Google created a filter to remove low/poor quality websites using exact match domains from ranking in search engine results.

Because websites using exact match domains contained the keywords in the domains that users used when searching, they were easily ranked as authoritative websites in search results.

With the intro of the Google EMD update, many website owners and developers were hit hard in loss of rankings, traffic and revenue.

Others were penalized to the point of de-indexed in some cases for their websites using exact match domains, also known as keyword domains.

From sea to shining sea, you’ll read and hear mixed reviews when attempting to find a final resolve for whether you should or should not use exact match domains.

However, my hope is to help you thoroughly understand why and how exact match domains can be used effectively and ineffectively.

I receive a wide range of emails and phone calls in a given week questioning how to generate content that increases website traffic.

From business owners, website developers, and even other SEO consultants posing as potential customers, everyone wants to know what the secret is when it comes to content marketing that increases search ranking and website traffic.

There are plenty of resources, whether newsletters, websites, blogs, ebooks, etc., telling you the bare bone SEO basics and principles, such as creating content:

• Written with a focus on customers and not search engines
• That is more than 600 words in length, ideally 1000-1500 or more
• That is relevant and specific to your industry and target market
• That educates, informs and solves problems for customers
• That customers will share with the masses
• That is easy-to-read content consisting of short sentences and containing every day layman terms
• Using specific keywords and keyword variations in moderation
• That includes the use of header tags with keywords within header tags
• Containing moderately supportive external and internal links, images, and videos

And the list goes on with other value-add content marketing strategies and techniques to help increase not only your website or blog’s search engine ranking, but also increase the likelihood your content is shared with the masses and increasing overall website traffic.

Today’s post on content marketing will guarantee you success should you religiously understand, comprehend and flawlessly execute each aspect.

Let’s get started.

Having been involved with SEO in various roles over the last 10 or more years, I’ve had my fair share of conversations dealing with a wide variety of theories and hypothesis concerning the best approach to a company’s SEO efforts.

From in-house SEO to outsourced SEO, I’ve seen SEO efforts range from being planned, implemented, executed, measured and sustained flawlessly to those SEO efforts that were DOA or dead on arrival once the SEO efforts were executed. I’ve also seen and experienced mediocre SEO efforts.

My point is, there is no one-size fits all SEO effort. Whether in-house or outsourced, consider your SEO effort to be unique in its own right.

That’s not to say you should not focus on SEO fundamentals, but it is to say that you should always enter SEO knowing that there is no guarantee either way.