Why would someone spend dozens if not hundreds of hours learning about SEO (you have to account for all that time in your estimates) when they can hire someone who knows it to do it for them?
I could spend a few dozen/hundred hours learning about the tax code but I spend money on an accountant instead and it is money well spent.
Don’t you think that’s a question for another thread?
He’s being sarcastic…
Back to the original topic, anybody who tries to do everything himself is going to fail at most of the things that he tries. If you want to be the webmaster, content writer, SEO specialist, track down leads to sell ads to, manage your sites, etc… then best of luck to you. It’s not a bright way to do things, but if it works for you, then great.
I am a skilled and experienced .Net Developer–and I would much rather pay someone else to do my SEO. The reason is that it is a specialty. The trends and techniques are always changing, and I don’t have the time to keep up with that AND the RIA technologies, the latest in JQuery and Silverlight and SQL Server and all that. An SEO specialist can stay abreast of best practices in SEO while I do the same in Business Intelligence.
As someone in the thread said, we pay plumbers and mechanics not because we can’t fix the sink or change the oil but because it is a matter of choosing the best investment of our time.
I’ve spent hours trying to cut through mountains of SEO mythology which clients I have worked with over the years have gleaned from so-called experts that run some of these resource sites. Such sites tend to be cross-compilations of each others various theories about SEO, with a few facts sprinkled in-between.
Whilst I’m all for experimenting, many so-called rules are little more than assumptions. Worse still, some corner-stone assumptions of a few self-proclaimed SEO experts are simply plain wrong, directly contradicting black and white statements made by search engine companies themselves.
A few examples:-
Publishing Google searches that are supposed to return certain information about secondary indexes when said search has never been documented anywhere by Google, and a simple cross-check of the search parameters reveals it would actually return something else altogether different.
One of the most misleading graphs ever published was one which ranked various SEO ranking factors based on how important survey respondents who claimed to be SEO practitioners considered they were. Since that graph was published, many SEO resource sites have referenced said graph as evidence of the varying levels of importance of various SEO factors - when in fact it was nothing of the sort. Indeed, not a shred of evidence was presented to add any weight to the collective assertions of the survey respondents.
Not being technically savvy, users frequently don’t understand what they are reading and are unable to distinguish between documented guidelines produced by search engines and mere heresay.
So, this is the kind of foundation many “do-it-yourselfers” end up working from. As a result, they are frequently distracted by pointless issues and often focus way too much energy on tactical activities instead of starting out by honing a clear strategy and then focussing on meeting authoritative guidelines with an emphasis on good content.
If you really thought you had cracked the holy grail of getting to #1 on Google in a predictable fashion, why would you tell everyone?
I think paid SEO create more advantage than do it yourself. SEO is time consuming and you don’t have to waste your precious time looking for “great resources”.
If you’re running a business, you should have time.
All business have some time, but few would take the time to SEO. There is a minor issue of resources too. So even if they has abundant time they simply don’t have the knowledge to do it. (e.g. they would still have to spend around 1 week or so to learn it, not to mention implementing the solution. Most companies feel their time is better spent elsewhere).
There is also an enormous misconception of what SEO works and what doesn’t, even reading material from 3/4 years ago is likely to be obsolete. SEO is best left to the professional.
Most companies out there would not have a clue to do with the online material, let alone execute it. In the long run it might be worth having their own in-house web team, but nobody knows the tomorrow and many companies cannot afford being in it for the long haul as they don’t know were they will be in 3+ years time.
On another note Google sees what is important and ranks it accordingly. If your website is developed in the correct manner with correct prinples then SEO would come naturally without any SEO tricks. This being the case I feel in many cases it’s more important to design and develop your site in the correct way, enabling social interaction than practicing something that Google would rather see dead.
Somebody once told me that if something should be somewhere on Google it will be without the need for hearsay myths.
This is the mantra everyone should have in regards to SEO work. In fact, before anyone posts here this should be displayed in big, flashing words on their screen.
Not just for your own site, but for the sake of a search engine. In a lot of areas Google’s search is becoming worse and worse as SEO spammers take rankings from other, reputable sites. Nowadays it’s hard not to search for something on Google and not land on a page selling something.
To me, SEO has, and always will be about making your site better than its competitors.
I tried learning SEO myself and added forum and BLOG at www.buzzerchat.com now both forum and BLOG have topics and posts but google or any other search engine wont index it why ?
Can anyone here tell me in detail what i need to do ?
I agree, SEO can be learned, there is nothing that the professional SEO companies know that you can’t know yourself, via visiting forums like these, and some of them are extortinate in their pricing charging as much as $1000 for something they garned from a forunm
Why would you pay a mechanic for an oil change when you can do it yourself?
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, or even want to. There are people who specialize in certain area’s that are much much more effective at doing their job and are interested in doing it. So you can probably do the oil change yourself but your mechanic will also be able to inspect and let you know about other things you’d otherwise miss.
The same applies for good online marketing and SEO in particular. People think web developers can do everything in the blink of an eye. “You can have that ready tomorrow right?”. Sorry, we can’t. SEO is a long term strategy that takes long term resources if you want to do it right. When people think of SEO they just think of link building. To me, that’s just half the battle. In order to succeed with your website you need some goals. What do you want the visitor to do once on your page? Post a comment? Sign up for a newsletter? Buy something? If you don’t have a solid understanding of web metrics then I’d advise against do it yourself SEO. By analyzing the traffic coming to your site you can see if they all just leaving or achieving the goals you want. Sending more traffic that doesn’t meet any of your goals won’t help you succeed.
Do-it-yourself means less time to do the things you enjoy. Maybe it’s programming in RoR or .NET, designing, strategy, or something else? It’s like hiring a bookkeeper or doing it yourself. You can save some money buy doing it yourself but who actually enjoys bookkeeping?
Try more like $20,000-$60,000, as I’ve heard recently from a client. Some SEO companies are out of their minds with what they charge.
That said, it’s not as easy as some are suggesting to just hop on a forum and learn everything you need to know to do SEO yourself. Nor does the fact that SEO information is readily available mean that it’s worth someone’s time to learn it and put it into practice. Like anything else, it’s a skill that takes time to learn, time to get good at, and time to employ in your own projects. All that time may not be worth the cost savings compared to hiring an SEO professional.
My philosophy on paying others to do things is I will do what I know how to do best in order to pay others what they know how to do best. Everything these days is way to specialized to stay on top of everything. Anybody that thinks they can is destined to always remain in the small time. Bill Gates never was and never will be a great programmer. His greatness is in the ability to close deals and then go out and find the people to do the creation so that he could fulfill the deal he just closed.
Having said that, when you do hire a firm, do not hire one as the result of an email solicitation. Any search engine optimization company worth it’s salt will have more business than they know what to do with as a result of people finding them in the search engines. Duh.
SEO is time consuming and there are lots of rip-offs out there… there is a lot you can do yourself, though if your a business owner like myself, it’s better to pay somebody to do it - of course you need to trust they are doing it. Things like forum/blog posting, article writing/submitting, free directory listing, link building with other sites. Coming up with the content too is a job in itself, but if you have quality content you can get out there, you can definitely help your SEO!
You do realize that any good seo company does far more then finding some keywords you should optimize for and using them on your page? They spend a large amount of the budget on actually building links, writing new content for the site and constantly tracking.
Im doing SEO by myself right now for i dont have money to pay for it.
just keep learning the knowleage of SEO and get better in this field.
By the way where could i edit my signature?
A lot of these “SEO companies” are actually online marketing firms, who often cater for large, multi-national companies like Coca Cola, Kraft, Microsoft and IBM. Their jobs stretch far above SEO/SEM, and their entire existence is based on working with huge marketing divisions and using their network of contacts and abilities to market a product or service effectively.
The two reasons they charge so much is because they don’t want your business (unless you’re a huge company that they can lovingly stick on their “Current Clients” list) and because when you’re at that level in business that price is the norm; it’s even expected. I’ve known people pitch online services to large companies with a reasonable price only to be shot down because the price was too low, because the client didn’t believe that the price justified the value that they wanted to gain.
More often than not they know very little about SEO/SEM, but they don’t need to. They’ve graduated from fantastic business schools, have experience working with large companies, and so on. As they’ve often shown, if you do everything you’re supposed to online then there’s very little reason for your website to not succeed.
Those prices are not for your or me, their for the big companies who can afford that. A normal company can charge anything from 150GBP - 350GBP per month, depending on what they do and the hours they spend.
It’s like paying 10k for a web design (image only no HTML). The quality is likely to be marginally better, but is it really worth more than 9x the amount. Somewhat doubtful.
I have countless examples of were this has happened. Sometimes it’s not the cost that defines quality, but the company or person you’re dealing with. Many companies who have 5+ tier system to their organizations have to charge the price they do so that they can pay the next person up.
Companies who can afford those prices trust their judgement simply on the basis of them being a big company. I suppose you can tell I don’t work for a big company.
I mostly do it myself, but i have a lot of friends that work SEO, so i can get a lot of info from them. People who don’t have sources for informations, learn much harder, because there are so many info sources, and they are mostly with different informations.
Also, one more thing, count how much you work, and also how much you will spent. This is how you will see how much your time is worth per hour, and maybe will be cheaper just to pay someone to do it…
SEO is full time work it’s not a part time work, if you hire a professional person he/she can provide you better result on rest of time, if you interested and enough time and believing to learn then you can do it yourself
