ROI. B2B. SEO. Our worlds are full of these three-letter acronyms that roll off the tongue, disguising just how important it is to give them our full attention.

If you’re a business owner, you’ll know all too well how challenging it can be to decide where to invest your organisation’s time, resources, and finances. With no shortage of options clamouring for attention, many of your outcomes will be dictated by the strategy of where those investments lie. Particularly for business owners who are working with small levels of cashflow or capital, the temptation to DIY key aspects of their digital marketing can be high – but when it comes to SEO, the cost of getting it wrong, or missing an opportunity an expert would spot, can be not only significant, but transformational.

Businesses aiming to carve out a significant and beneficial online presence know that understanding and implementing SEO is non-negotiable. Whether you’re in a position to hire an expert or looking to build the beginnings of your strategy yourself, we’ve detailed what you need to consider when it comes to choosing whether to DIY SEO or hire a professional.

First things first: what is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is focused on improving a website’s visibility in search engines like Google. By optimising various elements of a website, such as its structure, content, and performance, small but meaningful tweaks can lead to significant improvements in where it places in search engine results pages (SERPS) in relation to specific keywords or phrases.

Enhancing a site’s SEO can give businesses a competitive edge, capturing a crucial chunk of that all-important organic search, building low-cost leads, and increasing the likelihood of converting casual visitors into paying customers. This is a fundamental investment for every business in our modern age, directly impacting the amount of organic traffic a website is likely to receive.

DIY SEO: the pros and cons

With the importance of SEO at the forefront, it becomes easier to evaluate the pros and cons of taking a DIY approach to this cornerstone of your marketing plan.

Pros include:

• DIYing can be cost-effective – initially. DIY SEO may seem like the most cost-effective option, removing the need to invest in professional SEO activity.
• Natural learning experiences. If you’re engaging in your own SEO, you’re likely to experience a valuable learning curve, gaining key insights into the dynamics of digital marketing.
• Full control. By managing SEO in-house, you’ll have complete control over SEO strategies, their implementation, and the monitoring of results.

Cons of DIYing SEO include:

• It’s time-consuming. Building an effective SEO strategy that leads to results requires significant levels of time and dedication. For business owners, this means less time can be invested in core business activities, likely reducing revenue capacities in other areas.
• A lack of expertise can hinder results. Our SEO experts bring extensive knowledge to SEO development and management, ensuring the highest quality of results within meaningful metrics for our clients. Without this expertise, DIY management can mean more grasping in the dark, using a trial-and-error approach over time to see what might work.
• Results are slower. DIY SEO can lead to significantly slower results, taking time to build towards any kind of tangible momentum as a result of the learning and experimentation involved.

Professional SEO services: the pros and cons

On the other side of the table lies the option of professional SEO service management, bringing with it its own list of pros and cons.

The pros of bringing in the professionals:

• Expert insight. Your business will immediately benefit from the expertise, experience, and up-to-date insights an expert brings to the ever-changing SEO landscape.
• Time savings. No more poking around on YouTube or in explanatory blogs with complicated steps. When you’ve got an expert team managing your SEO, you’re free to focus on running and growing your business, taking responsibility for the strategy and execution that only you can do.
• Consistent results. When you’ve got the right professionals with the right strategy, you can expect consistency in your results, sustainability in your SEO direction, and enhanced online visibility and conversion rates.

The cons:

• An upfront financial investment. This can be one of the biggest blockages business owners have when investing in professional SEO services. However, without professional knowledge and expertise, sales and revenue could be leaking from your bottom line, leading to far more losses than the investment itself.
• A dependence on external teams. With many solo operators and agencies offering SEO services that rely on a lack of understanding from their clients, there can be a risk of depending on an external team that’s not as invested in your success as you are.

Making the right choice for your SEO needs

We see investing in SEO as an insurance investment: without significant gains in your SEO, you’re at risk of losing crucial market share to your competitors, opening your company up to ongoing risks and stumbling blocks.

We overcome many of the cons of hiring professionals to revolutionise your SEO by delivering results with a difference. To achieve real rankings based on effective SEO strategies, we monitor and implement SEO to propel businesses forward in a crowded market. Whether it’s in the area of consistent competitor analysis, cleaning up bad links, implementing a digital PR strategy, crafting a consistent on-site blog strategy, optimising images, meta descriptions, page titles, and more, we’re driven to make sure our clients are appearing in the first page of Google’s results.

For business owners worried about the cost? We speak from results, like with AirfareGeeks, where we increased front page ranks by 400%, or Captain Green Solar, whose organic traffic we increased by 127% while sending their top 10 keywords skyrocketing by 512%. By bringing traffic to our clients, we’re giving them their best bet of converting passers-by into sales.

Dedicated to delivering the highest quality of expert-led services and tailored solutions to meet your business’s goal, we bring the best of SEO opportunities right to your front door. To learn more about our proven strategies and how to achieve the best value for your investment, contact our friendly, expert team.