QUESTION: Should you be doing your own SEO?

DIY SEO: Is it a good or bad thing? Can you be doing more damage by attempting to rank your own site if you aren’t an expert on the subject?

That’s what I hope to answer in this blog post.

As Google keeps improving its searches, any article that doesn’t help the search achieve their goals is going to soon be off the first page. So, if you hire an SEO company to take care of the content of your site, you have the potential to become just another website that posts for posting sake.

This is bad.

The content that you post on your website and share on your social media channels needs to be interesting, informative and most importantly, answer the question you have asked as the title. I wrote an article on my best performing post as it’s a great example of what a good post is.

Due to the intense amount of competition in all markets, people post all the time. This is fine for the likes of LADBible, Buzzfeed and Cracked as they have a huge amount of writers and guest writers. They can also write about a huge range of topics. What about other types of business that are niche?

Quality over quantity

Good blog articles take time to curate. They should try to solve a problem or be a helpful review of products, have a video version of the solution, include images, internal links, external links and have all the keywords that are associated with the problem or product.

For a quality, SEO friendly post, you’d want to spend a good day on it. If you’re including a video then maybe a bit longer (check out my reviews of online video making tools).

Articles now also need to be around 800-1000 words in a competitive market to stand a chance of ranking highly. They also need to be well written to keep the reader engaged.

Posting articles every week can be a massive amount of work if you (like me) aren’t the best writer. It also takes time to think if great subjects to cover. The way I normally come up with blog posts to write about is from day to day interactions with clients and other business owners.

So, should you do it yourself or get someone else to do the writing for you? Here are my thoughts for both sides…

Is this how to internet?

Nopes, do it yourself.

You are (should be) the expert on what you do. So, as a customer, I want to hear what you have to say on that particular subject.

There are enough resources and training out there to give you the skills to become a great blog writer. Here are some of my recommendations:

Things are much easier when you get the right training and tools to do the job. You just need a little motivation and “get up and go” to do it yourself.

Yes, handle it all for me!

This option is great for a couple of reasons but still needs to be done properly to be the most effective. Reasons to outsource would be:

  • No time – This is the most common reason people outsource. SEO is massively important to any businesses marketing so it needs to be done, just some people are too busy to give it the attention it needs.
  • No interest or know how – This too is also common. People think that SEO is some mystical internet magic that only tech-savvy folk can do. This is only 37% true*.

SEO is time-consuming due to the detail that needs to go into each article to make them captivating for your audience. If you’re not the creative type then coming up with ideas then it can be a headache trying to just think of things to write.

Not having the time to train up and practice the writing part is also a good sign to outsource. No one can be good at everything. It’s much better to focus on what you are good at than half-ass what you are not.

Important things to note when you are outsourcing though:

  • Be in contact with your SEO company. They should be emailing you with ideas for a blog post, new ways to get information across and checking that the information they are putting out is accurate.
  • They need to be creative and be using tools other than just writing massive articles. A good test is to ask yourself “Would I read this?”. If its a no, then why would your customers want to read it?

Conclusion

Depending on your skill set and availability will determine whether or not you should get help with your SEO. For the most part and the way the industry is going, I’d say to give it a go yourself first.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, congratulations! I hope it helped. If you are planning to take on the SEO task yourself, please check that your website is in a state that your efforts will not go to waste.

Run your site through GTMetrix, its free and will give you a simple but detailed report of your website in a few seconds. You want to be getting at least B’s.

*Tech is part of SEO but not all of it. 37% is a guess 🙂