When I tell people I’m an SEO consultant their reaction tends to go one of two ways: I’m the master of a dark art no muggle can understand or, alternatively, I’m in the business of selling the emperor nudey rudey clothes.
The reality is, I’m afraid, less noteworthy. I am in fact merely a student of Google; a watcher of dashboards and tweaker of websites.
SEO is not magic, nor is it rocket science, but in an online world it is absolutely crucial.
Get learning
If you have the time to spend learning how to do it, you can definitely DIY basic SEO. There are lots of free resources out there that will give you a baseline understanding of how it works and how to implement the first steps on your own.
And it’s not the worst idea. Often business owners are well placed to write their own content for their site and to build backlinks from suppliers or industry partners.
Basic SEO can take you a long way, not least because understanding the fundamentals puts you in a great position when choosing someone to help you down the track. You’ll know the right questions to ask, and the outcomes you should be looking for.
Because, ultimately, people do tend to outsource. That’s usually because they don’t want to personally dedicate the time it takes to do SEO well and, frankly, a specialist should be able to do a much better job.
Is SEO for you?
While you will definitely want to lay the foundations, SEO isn’t an immediate ‘solution’ for start-ups. If your website is brand new, it will take some time for Google to build authority. In that case, while investing in SEO will pay off down the track, it likely won’t bring in immediate sales or enquiries.
Need sales yesterday? I’d suggest deploying paid Google ads or social media ads for immediate effect, then combine it with SEO – which will be your saviour over time.
SEO priorities
Hopefully you’re starting to feel brave enough to tackle the demon SEO, in which case I’d suggest focusing your efforts on the most important pages of your site. Usually that’s your homepage and services pages, if you’re a service business, or your homepage and collections pages if you have an ecommerce store. If you’re selling products, think about which categories and products are most profitable for your business, bring in the most revenue or which you have exclusive access to, and focus on improving those pages.
For service-based businesses, make sure you have a separate page on your website for each of the services you offer.
If you’re on a budget and can’t afford to outsource an entire SEO campaign, I recommend outsourcing at least keyword research and mapping so that you know what you’re optimising each page for.
Rookie missteps
A word of warning – please do not assume that your very lovely web developer or web designer will set up an SEO optimised site. SEO is a completely separate discipline, so you’ll need to check it out for yourself, or bring in the experts.
Also, if you are going down the road of paying for SEO, beware ‘cheapies’. Honestly, anything $500 and below is unlikely to get you any real results, simply because good SEO is extremely resource intensive – it takes time, content and strategy for it to work. Cheap SEO is often quick and dirty, with results that don’t stick.
Finally, just remember, the biggest SEO mistake you can make is not getting on board – are you ready to take up the challenge?
By Crystal Wong
Crystal Wong is the founder of Skyblue Search, providing practical, personalised SEO consulting to help your website get the Google love your business deserves.