When starting a new website or attempting to build traffic on an existing one it can be tempting to try to do all of the work yourself, or hire the cheapest people you can find, especially if you are the sole owner of the site. This can cause problems, and at the very least will cause you to get bogged down with extra work that will take months or even years longer than it should.
SEO Is Hard Work
When you need work done on the pipes in your house, you call a plumber. When you need work done on the wiring in your house, you call an electrician. You don’t do it yourself because you lack the knowledge and tools that professionals have, and because it can be dangerous to do it yourself. The same applies when attempting to get better rankings on the search engines; if you use the wrong methods your site will be penalised or even banned from the listings.
Avoid Old and Misleading Information
There are thousands of guides and forum posts floating around the internet that have some information about search engine optimisation, but how will you be able to sift through the good from the bad? Even if it was once good information it is probably outdated already, so its usefulness will be questionable at best and harmful at worst. You may not even realise that your website is getting penalised for using these harmful methods until much later, and it can take some serious effort to get your reputation back with the major search providers.
Time Is Money
You could do all of the SEO work for yourself eventually, but is it worth your time that could be better used doing something else? It takes months of research, and years of trial and error, to be good at optimising websites, and all of this time and effort will be taken away from whatever it is that you should be doing instead. Is it worth it to research and do everything yourself when you could simply pay someone who already knows what to do?
Algorithms Constantly Changing
Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms – the methods they use to determine where a website will be in the rankings – so you need to hire someone who will keep up to date. Again, you could take the time to do this yourself and constantly be on the lookout for the next big change, but in most cases it just makes more sense to hire an SEO marketing company that does this for a living. These professionals have connections in the business, along with a wealth of experience to draw from, which gives them a huge advantage over a newcomer who is just trying to learn the ropes.
These are just a few of the main reasons why you should not attempt to take on the huge task of SEO all by yourself. It’s hard work, because if it was easy then everyone would be pushing each other off the front page of search results every day, but the fact is that most websites that get good rankings tend to stay there for a long time.