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, can be quite an experience for small business owners 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: 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 SEO coaching and consulting like a fish to water. They 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 comes the bad who were too smart for their good and stepped on the dark side of SEO due to impatience, naïve, or shrewdness.

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

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

But most small business owners don’t truly consider all facets of do-it-yourself SEO.

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

And just like you need the S, E, and O to spell SEO, you also need 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 takes anywhere from 1 hour to years to see SEO results. 

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

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.

SEO professionals’ lack of clear definition and communication typically sets unrealistic expectations 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 them 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 many 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.

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

Let me start by making one thing clear: brandable or keyword .com domains can rank well in search engines.

There will always be pros and cons to using each type of .com domain name.

This week I received an email inquiring about whether or not it is “better” to build or develop a business website on a brandable domain or a keyword .com domain.

How the question was worded was more a focus on search engine optimization (SEO) than an overall focus on how their domain name should align with their business goal and objectives.

I could sense there was a strong desire to make money taking the “by any means necessary” approach.

There was more weight given to SEO to the point that they were ready to make a heavy investment to create thousands of optimized keyword domain websites around a certain niche.

What they were really asking me was, “Which, brandable domain or multiple keyword domains, can bring me the most traffic and, most importantly, money with the least amount of time, money, and effort invested?”

First, it was 1And1.com and their new domain name extensions commercials, and now GoDaddy has hopped into the mix promoting new domain name extensions.

I received an email notifying me that new domain name extensions are coming. It’ll be interesting to see how many small business owners and the general public understand Godaddy’s email in its most basic form.  

You will now have a chance to create a new domain name since the .com domain name you’ve always wanted is owned by someone asking an arm and leg for it or has it parked with funny colors and links on pages.  

So, for example, you will have the opportunity to own WomensClothing.shop, WomensClothing.online, WomensClothing.luxury, WomensClothing.blog, and WomensClothing.web since you can’t own WomensClothing.com.

As expressed in Godaddy’s email, the new domain name extensions will open a door of greater opportunity that never existed before. I think GoDaddy did a reasonably good job trying to simplify the tsunami of new gTLDs, or, as called by everyday people, new domain name extensions set to hit the domain market by the end of this year.

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.