Many business owners and executives ask themselves (and sometimes us) this question. It is most understandable - in today’s volatile and wobbly economic climate, anyone in business would want to save on outside services as much as possible. But is it truly possible to do SEO on your own? Let’s take a look:
Is organic SEO rocket science?
Nope, almost anyone can learn the basic principles of SEO, and all the information can be found online. Many people have already heard about SEO and know what it means and may have also already learned how to enter meta tags into their site’s management system. In most of the systems, this is very easy to do. It is also easy to see whether the tags’ texts are of the right length or get cut off in the middle on Google, etc. However, this knowledge may not be enough to get your page into the top results a search engine would offer for a certain keyword. For example, many people who know how to enter a description HTML meta tag into a page do not also realize that there are three rules for its content – it has to contain the chosen keyword for the page, the brand name and a call to action, all in the constraints of 160 characters. Almost all of the customers we ever worked with knew how to enter a description tag into a page on their website but have not heard about these important rules until we mentioned it to them. Did you?
This is just one example of the depth of knowledge needed for every one of the many parameters that compose SEO work. Evidently, there is more to SEO than meets the eye or everyone would be doing it themselves. It is almost impossible for the layperson to know everything there is to know in SEO, especially if they’re busy with their “real” work.
Why you DO need professional SEO services:
As we already demonstrated, the basic principles of SEO are simple, but that is hardly all there is to SEO. There are literally hundreds of parameters that are taken into consideration by search engines’ algorithms when assigning a ranking to a website page. SEO specialists know all of them and possess the technical understanding of how to use them in a website to promote its rankings.
You can find all of the information about SEO online, but: You may stumble upon obsolete knowledge that is no longer valid and may even be harmful; You may stumble upon a site that teaches you “Black Hat” practices that may be punishable by Google and can get your website kicked out of it altogether, sometimes permanently; You may stumble upon a website that was created by someone who is not an authority on the issue and who may offer tips that are far from the best practices in the field, and so on. It is very hard to tell whether the information you can get online is truly helpful and beneficial, and you probably do not have the time to start asking around about it.
SEO is an ever-changing field that is updated daily. Google keeps tweaking its algorithm, and rolls out updates for it very often. So do other search engines. SEO specialists that are good at their job make sure they are in sync with the latest updates and knowledge in the field, connect with other specialists to continuously learn more about what can be done to promote rankings for their clients and attend professional seminars, lectures and conferences related to their work. This takes up much time and would be very hard to keep up with for anyone whose main job is in another field.
SEO experts who have been working in the field for years have already seen all kinds of websites of all sizes and professional fields, met and dealt with many kinds of issues and learned how to work with different website platforms and management systems. This saves a huge amount of time when having to deal with an issue on your website. An experienced SEO specialist can solve in minutes what it may take others days to learn how to fix, maybe even longer. Time is money, and your time may cost more than an SEO expert, so it would be a shame to waste it on solving the issue by yourself.
Your website can considerably benefit from professional search engine optimization services, too. Use the following button to create an initial SEO report for your website for free. To schedule an introductory meeting with one of our SEO experts, please leave your details in the form, and we’ll get back to you shortly.
