Should I hire someone to do my SEO?

Running a business, whether it’s your own small business or coming on board to a larger company and finding yourself in charge of the decision of whether to hire a SEO company or learn the skill yourself can be confronting. We talk to a lot of business owners who are tossing up between these choices, and so we have decided to put together this quick guide to approaching the decision with the age old staple – a pro/con list.

It might seem a little simplistic at first, but being able to break down a troubling question into easily comparable categories is one of the best ways you can approach solving the problem.

Considering the Do It Yourself SEO route is a path most new business owners go down, so let’s summarize the pros of learning SEO yourself.

This may or may not be a pro for you personally but in our experience, good business owners tend to be the sort of people who enjoy adding new skills to their toolkit. More often than not, they’re always learning something new – whether it’s a hard skill like procurement or a new piece of software, or an interpersonal skillset in management or conflict resolution. Especially when they are a sole trader or founder, they either need to do most things themselves because they do not employ staff or they’re just used to it because they’ve been doing it for so long.

By learning and implementing your hard earned SEO skillset you get to dictate exactly what gets implemented and when. This kind of close monitoring suits many business owners as they recognize that everything their brand puts out is a reflection of themselves and they – understandably – want it to be the best possible content. When you take control of your own SEO plan, you put yourself firmly in the drivers seat and can push the project in whatever direction you choose – from your social media content to blogs, web site copy to advertising by lines.

With as many free SEO resources and tools on offer thanks to the vast world wide web, there is a free path to SEO understanding available to all. This does, of course, require the learner to navigate the good and bad sources, plan their learning journey, and actually undertake all the free trainings they sign up for – but it is possible to learn SEO for free. The ‘low cost’ option refers to the myriad of courses on offer from various creators, companies, and training centres. Finding the right one for you can be a chore in itself, you will want to make sure that it is trustworthy, up to date, and relevant to your category of business.

There is a lot of information out there – and not all of it is good or current. Many free resources are so out of date that the practices they describe are now considered to be ‘black hat’.

Lingo Uncovered: Black Hat SEO refers to those practices which might work in the short term but ultimately count against you and includes behaviours such as unethical manipulation of accounts or attacks on competitors’ websites instead of improving your own.

The learning curve is still steep, even if you do find a reliable and trustworthy source of truth. The idea that SEO is a single skill is misleading, caused by the human tendency to want to simplify – even we’re guilty of referring to the concept of ‘learning SEO’ the way someone might refer to ‘learning to juggle’!

SEO requires copy writing, coding, graphic design, web design, UX/UI development, research, technical skill, marketing copy, PPC development, software specific skills – and more.

While this can seem like a major pro for Type A personalities, that attitude often fades when they have to pull themselves away from budget tracking, product design, or contract negotiations to spend an hour deciding how to best write a 200 word paragraph or writing a week’s worth of useful social media copy.

It isn’t that the social media copy or paragraph decisions aren’t important, because they can be make or break for a business, but when you’re also responsible for every other aspect of the business it’s hard to give them the time and consideration they need in order to be the most effective.

Think about how much you pay yourself, or the amount you would be happy to accept working for someone else, then look at the several hours a week that you need to be spending learning, practicing, implementing your newly acquired SEO skills, and staying on top of the SEO industry.

The SEO landscape can change quickly thanks to algorithm changes, core search metrics being altered to mitigate grey and black hat SEO tactics the search engines feel are skewing the usefulness of search results, and legal or legislative change.

For example, when using lists of keywords in the ‘alt text’ for images went from being mildly frowned upon by people in the sector to being actively targeted by the search engines as that ‘alt text’ is actually there for screen readers to assist people with access needs, or when GDPR came in seemingly overnight and applied to anyone with European site visitors.

Compare your “time spend cost” to how much you might spend on a SEO service – you might just be surprised how much more efficient hiring out can be, especially when you account for the progress you can be making elsewhere in your business while an expert is doing your SEO for you.

There are things you can learn yourself to save a bit of time or money – giving yourself a facial, checking your own engine oil, or hanging a door to close off that alcove into a closet. However, you’re probably not going to try your own chemical peel, rebuild your gearbox from scratch, or change the structural foundation of your house.

Relying on the expertise of a SEO service means you can be sure they’re doing the right thing from the ground up, you can sleep easy knowing that your digital house isn’t going to fall down around you.

A good SEO company will have their tried and true approaches, of course, but they will also take your needs, preferences, and individual personality into consideration.

Any SEO company that tells you that you *have* to go live on social media and answer stranger’s questions, participate in trends regardless of your industry, or write blogs that don’t focus on your key messaging isn’t listening to you.

Remember – your SEO company is there to help your business succeed, not force a cookie cutter plan on to you.

With the professional tools they have access to, your SEO company can provide very detailed reports on what is and what is not working for your online presence. These metrics are important and help you decide where to go in the future, what direction you want to take, and monitor your ROI.

Finding the right ‘someone to do my SEO’ is paramount – the right someone will be a massive advantage in the competitive digital world we live in, while the wrong one can seriously harm your changes at growth.

Finding a good SEO company to do SEO for your business does take a little effort – but it’s worth it when the results start rolling in.
Check out our “How Do I Know My SEO Company is Good?” for tips on choosing the right SEO company

Unless you want to completely hand over the reigns to your SEO consultant, you will still need to make time to talk to them and read the reports they send about the performance of your site. This ongoing input requirement from you can be lessened by setting up a solid plan early in the relationship and checking in with them semi-regularly to make sure you’re happy with the output.

You can also set it up so that you approve anything before it goes live – whether this is only for the first month or two while you get to know each other or continues for the life of the contract is up to you.

If your goals are smaller, growth isn’t a focus, or you’re not financially in a position to spend on outside help then your ROI rate will be different from a larger, more ambitious, or positive cash flow business.

What is considered ‘expensive’ changes from business to business. For example, a company making $50,000 in revenue a month may not think twice about a $5,000 monthly SEO cost, but if you’re closer to the $5,000 of revenue a month then your acceptable monthly SEO investment isn’t likely to be 5k.

Deciding on your personal answer to the question “should I hire someone to do my SEO” is just that – personal. Here at Net Branding we are proud of our integrity and are always striving to be transparent when it comes to our services, pricing, and company values – so we’re not going to tell you that no matter your situation you should hire an SEO consultant to do your SEO for you. Every situation is unique and we respect that.

To see how SEO could benefit you, talk to us about a plan that is tailored to your needs and budget, and get a high level view of your current SEO position get in touch today for a SEO Audit.