As you’re getting started learning how to do your own seo – the onslaught of SEO tutorials and guides you’re going to read will often provide 100’s of different optimization methods to you all at once. This can leave you feeling even more confused than when you started.
Regardless – I admire your decision to do your own SEO, but I also have some words of advice.
Of course, we also understand that some intelligent business owners are just trying to do their homework to understand what Search Engine Optimization is. You can do that to either save a few bucks or at least come to understand SEO well enough that you don’t get taken advantage of when the time comes to select an SEO consultant.
Recommendations – Do Your Own SEO
Our recommendation is always to choose ONE primary source of SEO guidance – and stick to it like glue. Find an author you like, follow their advice, and see if you get anywhere. The only way to know that your “Guru” knows his stuff is to test their methods for yourself. Though we’d love to be that source of guidance, we still recommend limiting your information intake to one agency or provider regardless of who you choose. At least try to stick to a “one-at-a-time” strategy. If the first person you follow doesn’t work out, move on to the next best option. The worst thing you can ever do is put your eggs in multiple baskets simultaneously – or even worse, hire numerous agencies. Wires will become crossed over time – and then you’ll be putting out fires as the SEO penalties from Google stack up.
Another warning about self-taught learning would be to watch out for out-of-date sources like SEO blogs & articles. For example, you might come across a website that lists a method you want to put into practice for your business, but you miss the fact that the post date is from 2009. Why is that so bad, you might ask? Well, any “cutting-edge” methods that may have worked well back in 2010 will likely be of zero use to your website today in 2021. Google makes significant updates to their PageRank Algorithm weekly! Understandably, most people running a business have little to no extra time to read an SEO blog every day to keep up with the latest best practices.
Triple Check EVERYTHING -When Doing SEO on Your Own
Do you have any way of knowing whether that method you want to use works? Aside from that blog post – is your first instinct to do additional research to see if everything checks out? In a nutshell, that’s SEO. You’ll be trying to read up and discover new options, strategies, and tactics. Test them out, record/measure the results of your changes, rinse, and repeat. If you just about fell asleep reading that, you may want to re-think being your Search Consultant because you will be doing much of this! I say that so you have a realistic understanding of what you need to do to succeed if you want to handle your SEO.
By jumping all over the place and getting your information from multiple sources (self-proclaimed SEO gurus etc.), you will damn near guarantee yourself a boatload of confusion even if you begin to comprehend bits and pieces as you go along. There’s no way to get around that, and it stems from the fact that there’s no agreed-upon magic formula for success in the SEO industry. Those who know how to improve position rankings are usually very guarded with those secrets (and with good reason) until they become common knowledge. There are online discussion forums full of disputes and arguments about SEO best practices, and without any authority on the subject – we may never know who’s right! How crazy is that?
We wish you the best of luck should you choose to do your SEO; be aware you have your work cut out for you if you didn’t get started early in the process (The early 2000s). Those of us who have watched the industry grow from its infancy will always have a bit of a leg up on any late bloomers, and that has much to do with being able to learn from the evolution of PageRank as we’ve watched it grow up. I remember the good old days of being able to rank my pages by tricking Search Engines with all kinds of “spammy” methods. Then, overnight it seemed everything changed in what Google, Yahoo, and Bing found to be “fair,” As things got more complicated, I became determined to focus on doing things the right way.
Do I Stand a Chance Competing If I Do My Own SEO?
As the founder of an SEO company, I’ve been able to view the traffic information for thousands of websites over the years – and as a result, I have a solid understanding of what will improve website traffic and what will negatively impact a site.
Handling your own SEO is a major undertaking – and one you should not take lightly. Consider that most business owners are not handling their own SEO – they are hiring folks like us to do the job for them. For that reason, you could be overwhelmingly outmatched as a novice if you’re going head-to-head with an established agency.
If you heed my warnings about the pitfalls of doing your SEO and decide you’d just as soon hire these very time-intensive tasks, please schedule a FREE consultation, and we’ll get started on turning your web properties into finely tuned SEO machines!
