Pros and Cons of Do-It-Yourself SEO.
Quick Summary of Contents
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.
Pros of Do-It-Yourself SEO
There is much success to be had by small business owners who have the time, money, and effort to invest in do-it-yourself SEO.
Do-it-yourself SEO goes beyond ranking well in search engines. It gives small business owners an in-depth understanding of the intricacies of their website, search engines, and SEO and how all three work together to grow a business in all facets, hopefully.
Save money not outsourcing to 3rd party SEO Professionals.
One of the biggest reasons for most small business owners to tackle do-it-yourself SEO is that you can save money by implementing proven, sound SEO tactics.
I know when potential customers vet Kickstart Commerce services, they want to know why they can’t do SEO alone and achieve the same results.
Essentially, they want the SEO performance and results but do not pay the cost.
In short, most small business owners are surprised when I inform, educate, and show them they, too, can perform SEO on their own without the cost and not outsource to a 3rd party SEO professional or agency.
However, you may save money by not paying someone else, but it may take you more effort and time to achieve the same results an SEO professional or agency could.
But again, you, as a small business owner, have to consider and determine what is most important to you and your business.
Are you saving money if it costs double or more in both time and labor to achieve subpar results?
If you can honestly answer yes to that question and have data to back it up, you are well on your way to becoming a do-it-yourself SEO pro and expert.
Save time optimizing your website because of intimate industry knowledge.
Regarding do-it-yourself SEO, one area I’ve always noticed potential customers and customers have always had an edge on Kickstart Commerce is truly understanding their industry, business, and customer base.
It’s a critical and imperative step that anyone, including SEO professionals, must not miss or dismiss.
When considering do-it-yourself SEO, possessing intimate industry knowledge of how your customers search, shop and buy will put you light years ahead of any SEO professional or agency.
Understanding traffic sources and which search keywords your customers use to arrive at your website will also help you as a business owner be able to communicate more effectively with both potential and existing customers.
Most of this intimate customer knowledge can be obtained or gleaned from your website using the following tools:
Learn SEO tactics and knowledge to increase ranking, traffic, and conversion.
One of the greatest benefits of learning SEO in a do-it-yourself approach is that you truly learn SEO and don’t have to depend on outside sources to rank your website well in search engines or sustain rankings.
This alone is huge to most small business owners because they can put the money spent on SEO into other marketing and advertising opportunities.
In addition, do-it-yourself SEO provides you with greater clarity for how your website operates and functions as a 24-hour salesperson.
You’ll be more in tune with the inner workings of your website and able to sense and notice the difference in small changes, whether positive or negative.
Another great aspect of learning do-it-yourself SEO is the fact that should you have to hire SEO professionals or an agency, both in-house and outsourced, you’ll be well versed in SEO to separate the good SEO from the bad and ugly, and the message from all the inaccurate or deceptive SEO noise.
Cons of Do-It-Yourself SEO
And dozens turn out bad for every good and successful do-it-yourself SEO story I hear about from small business owners.
Most of the bad do-it-yourself SEO stories can occur due to a wide number of reasons.
Some happen due to small business owners being impatient and knowingly taking a “by any means necessary” approach to rank.
Other do-it-yourself SEO efforts fail because small business owners unknowingly execute bad or deceptive SEO strategies and tactics only to have their websites heavily penalized or de-indexed in search engines.
Either way, before you get blinded and all gung-ho about the pros of do-it-yourself SEO, make sure you do your due diligence in firmly considering the cons of do-it-yourself SEO.
If you don’t, you’ll pay dearly in search engines and pay SEO professionals greatly to fix your SEO mess.
Cost in time, money, and effort as opposed to outsourcing.
Just as you can succeed doing SEO and not outsourcing, saving time, money, and effort, you can also cost yourself, your business, and your website in time, money, and effort.
Even though I coach and consult small business owners in do-it-yourself SEO and transparently give away the keys to the kingdom for how I rank Kickstart Commerce, it never fails that small business owners will spend 2-3 times as much money, time, and effort.
It’s taken me 10-plus years to hone my web development and SEO chops to the point of bringing about SEO results in a matter of months, if not weeks, in most cases.
So if it’s taken a professional that long to hone the skill, how in the world do you think it’ll only take you hours, days, weeks, or months to achieve the same, if not more or less, results?
It’s not to say that you cannot or should not master do-it-yourself SEO, but one must do the math in determining how much money, time, and effort it will take to pull off the SEO results that it would take to outsource SEO efforts.
Injure or harm your website due to SEO inexperience.
Many forays into do-it-yourself SEO by small business owners end up injuring or harming their websites.
Most of this harm is due to the inexperience of the small business owner in understanding the intricacies of SEO, most notably knowing the difference between white-hat SEO and black-hat SEO.
Even when small business owners understand the difference between sound and deceptive SEO practices, they assign inexperienced staff to manage their SEO efforts.
I’ve experienced several meetings and phone calls where an SEO strategy or tactic had been unknowingly performed incorrectly yet wreaked havoc on a website to the tune of heavy penalties and lost domain authority and rankings.
It pays to pay the professionals rather than chance it on the inexperience of yourself or unknowing and naïve staff.
Not keeping up with industry knowledge or the wrong SEO knowledge.
Whether in-house or outsourced or doing SEO yourself, I can’t stress the importance of keeping up with both white-hat SEO and black-hat SEO knowledge, period.
Most do-it-yourself SEO nightmares start with the small business owner scouring the internet and knowingly, or in most cases unknowingly, arriving at a black-hat blog and forum.
And in most cases, the small business owner took the first source they found as SEO Gospel, implementing and executing the deceptive strategies without giving it a second thought or reference.
Generally speaking, the same can be said for those who perform white-hat SEO and fail to keep up with the SEO industry.
I’ve had customers who elected not to hire Kickstart Commerce in favor of do-it-yourself SEO, and they were successful for a season.
But in their laziness and carelessness to keep up with the forever-changing SEO knowledge, these once successful customers became victims in performing outdated SEO strategies and tactics.
Their actions lead to heavy SEO penalties, and they must completely re-develop their website and SEO effort from scratch, new website design, domain, and all.
Conclusion of Do-It-Yourself SEO
This leads me to my final about do-it-yourself SEO regardless of the pros and cons, and it is that SEO is ongoing and not a one-time investment.
I meet and converse with many potential customers and find that most seek quick answers or silver-bullet SEO.
Regarding SEO, they have a champagne taste on Sprite’s budget and need results like yesterday.
Whether you decide do-it-yourself SEO is the best approach or hire in-house or outsourced SEO professionals, remember that it will take time, effort, and money to bring results.
The greatest investment you can make is thoroughly informing and educating yourself about SEO in all facets before blindly jumping into a do-it-yourself SEO effort.
[…] through this questioning and quite clear. The customer is grasping at every straw possible to drive do-it-yourself SEO results in the shortest amount of time […]