Managing SEO Yourself vs. Hiring a Professional

SEO is a Long-term Process

I’m sure you’ve heard about how SEO can get you great results but it will take a long time to get them. However, after you’ve patiently waited for your results, your site will be getting the best ROI out of any potential marketing strategy. Unfortunately, this also works in reverse if you manage to ruin your site’s SEO.

Poor habits and inexperience with SEO may lead to you unknowingly sabotaging your own site’s SEO value, and you may not notice this until it’s far too late. Due to the glacial speed with which site SEO values change, you may end up stuck in an SEO limbo (AKA anything but the front page) for quite some time.

This also means that you won’t be able to see any mistakes that you make while managing your site’s SEO until further down the line. This makes handling SEO for any non-professional a huge risk and it also makes it difficult to learn on the fly unless you’re learning under someone experienced.

For many site or business owners, taking such a risk is nearly unacceptable, especially if a large amount of their income is dependent on their site having good search results. In a world where the internet is becoming increasingly crucial for conducting good business, this can potentially kneecap your brand.

SEO May Not Be as Simple as it Looks

While you may have read one of our guides on improving your site’s SEO and think that you know everything about managing your site’s presence, we can promise you that SEO is not that easy. One of the things that makes experience in the field so crucial is that every site and every niche is different.

What may work for one site to get it to the top of the front page may not necessarily work for the next site. This is where you have to trust your judgement and make on the fly decisions that are reliant on your inherent knowledge of the SEO field instead of resorting to a tried and proven tactic.

Some of the things that you’ll have to account for include proper backlinking, which requires striking a fine balance between authoritative sources and internal links. Too many links and the algorithm may think that you’re stuffing your web pages with links that can’t possibly be relevant, even if they are.

So much of SEO is getting a feel for the algorithm which is ever-changing and ever-shifting. This means that no amount of training can replace experience in the field, and you always have to keep your ear to the ground because you never know when Google is going to pull a 180 and shift their algorithm again.

Common Mistakes That New SEO Managers Make

If you insist on handling your site’s SEO, we would be remiss not to mention some of the top mistakes that people make when they take things into their own hands. If you want to make sure that you don’t ruin your site’s SEO rankings right out of the gate, here are some of the things you should avoid doing.

Artificial backlinks are a cardinal sin, and they should be avoided at all costs. Even if you think you’re taking a shortcut or being sneaky, the algorithm will find out. You’ll also want to keep a close eye on the words that make up your content, since more keywords aren’t always better.

For example, if your content is stuffed with keywords that aren’t related to your niche so that you can reach out to a wider audience, that will backfire spectacularly. Keep your keywords directly related to what you’re doing or you’ll end up in a position where the algorithm doesn’t know what to do with your site.

Another key consideration when it comes to keywords is to ensure that you don’t end up stuffing your content with them. Google’s algorithm has been able to detect keyword stuffing for a long time, and it doesn’t take kindly to it at all. Make sure that content uses keywords at reasonable levels and the right density.

If you’re not sure how to ensure that your content has the right number of keywords for the overall word count of an article or blog post, there are plenty of tools available to help you. Some of these tools are free, but some of the more effective ones can cost you upwards of $200 per month for business use.

Professionals Have SEO Tools

That segues neatly into our next point. The pros who you pay to manage your site’s SEO already have all of the right tools, including subscriptions to these pricey services, and that’s part of the reason why you’re paying them. While a pro’s services will likely cost more than the subscription itself, they also know how to use those tools.

While SEO may seem like a logical concept, it can sometimes be very opaque, especially if you're not experienced enough to be comfortable with it. You may be wondering why you’d need a SERP checker or how to read the results of a rank tracker, but a pro has already seen these things countless times.

Of course, along with the tools, you’re paying for the consultation of someone who understands what your site needs and why it needs it.

Conclusion

As we’ve mentioned before, maintaining a good SEO value is a constant balancing act, and most business owners don’t have the time, money, or energy to handle it all themselves. If you do, however, then more power to you, because you’ve developed a valuable skill set.