You Should Avoid DIY SEO Optimizations, Here's Why

Since Google’s inception, three small letters have been haunting web strategies: SEO. Indeed, website optimization for search engines is a constant battle. Organic traffic is so important that spending keeps rising every year. Every year, the marketing budget allocated to search engine optimization gets bigger. In some cases, it gets to expensive that it makes sense to hire an in-house SEO expert instead of a consultant. Most companies get a bigger payoff by working with a freelance SEO expert. DIY SEO can cost you a lot more than you think. Here are 5 reasons not to be your own SEO expert:

You may have a very good understanding of how SEO works. You know how to do a keyword search, you know that your web content must be original and well written. Except sometimes that doesn’t mean you’re going to end up on the first page of Google, despite all your efforts. Knowing something and doing it every day are two different things. Search Engine Optimization is a field where theory flies apart fast in the face of low traffic. Go beyond basic SEO to gain new qualified leads and more relevant traffic.

All it takes is a bad website redesign to cost you all your organic traffic. Your site may never get back its positions in search engines. It all depends on the problem. You may have been:

• partially penalized
• totally penalized
• or simply lost your positions

This can happen because you do not have an SEO-friendly website. It is vital to know the SEO pitfalls you should avoid. This is where a knowledgeable SEO expert can guide your online business strategy.

Women Tech Makers in Montreal : Technical SEO Conference

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• Duplicated content, stolen from another site
• The stuffing of keywords in texts
• Pages with no optimized content hierarchy
• Lack of page redirection
• Mobile pop-ups that are too big

A mistake can happen very easily and turn into weeks of trying to recover your lost traffic. Often, it costs much more to repair mistakes than to avoid them. That’s why it’s better to contact an SEO expert before a redesign or any major changes to your website. You can ask for an SEO audit to get a clear roadmap of what needs to be done. You can also use it to request a list of technical specifications and a detailed SEO strategy. For those with a small budget, you can also choose to call on the SEO expert when you have specific questions. This saves you a lot of time searching and validating online to ask an expert.

Effective SEO takes hours and requires access to expensive paid tools. DYI SEO means you are spending valuable time away from your company’s operations. You are risking growth rather than trusting an expert. Every minute not 100% spent advancing the business lets the competition gain market shares. Investing in valuable SEO advice saves you time and money. It is an excellent investment because it allows you to focus on your priorities as a business leader.

The most frightening thing about SEO is that everything changes every 2 weeks! Everything can change overnight. Something that has been a good practice for years can lead to a penalty overnight! This means that there is a lot of bad information going around on the web about good SEO practices. Since 2003, there have been more than 70 algorithmic changes at Google. These changes will not slow down, especially with machine learning and vocal search. As the Web begins to migrate to a mobile market, you can expect more and more frequent changes.
I gave a conference some time ago about all the practices and myths in technical SEO
Women Tech Makers in Montreal : Technical SEO Conference

SEO seems easy for some people. However, not everything is that simple. Some things can help you gain more organic traffic but cost a lot of money. Others are cheap and easy. Here are the main elements to set up for a successful SEO campaign:

• On-site optimization
• Optimization external to the site
• Markup tags
• Keywords & research intent
• Content optimization
• Image optimization
• Mobile SEO Optimization
• Local SEO Optimization
• Voice SEO Optimization

The list is starting to get intimidating. That’s a lot to assimilate for most people at once. SEO is much more than just a few keywords here and there to achieve a high click rate. Good SEO requires continuous optimization, remediation and more.

If you are a small or medium-sized company, it is not possible to be able to make your own SEO yourself. It is not a money saving that is viable in the medium or long term. Working with an SEO expert is best when you want to save time, money and make sure you attract qualified traffic.
Do you have any questions about SEO or marketing? Let me know.

Ultimately, yes you can. We wrote an article on this as well. Feel free to get started with this and call us if you need more help! Get on with your DIY SEO plan! If you want to do a DIY keyword research, we also have something for you.