Paying for SEO

[iridessa]

What are people's opinions on paying for help?
I've done all my own seo until now but know that to move forward I need to teach myself a lot and this will take time.
I.ve been quoted between £300 and £400 per month for someone to do this for me......this is a lot of money to me.......also I am concerned about giving someone free access to my site....with all my customers and sales details.
What are others peoples opinions and experiences....DIY or get in an expert?

[david64]

What are others peoples opinions and experiences....DIY or get in an expert?

I think that would largely depend on how large your site is and how much you have got to spend. Larger site = more time spent on research + optimisation = higher costs.

So if your budget doesn't meet the size of your site, it would be best to try and DIY SEO the site.

The problem with DIY SEO is lack of experience. One of the most important things in an SEO in my opinion is their expirience both in breadth and depth. If you aren't an SEO, you have neither and thus don't know what avenues you have open to you and you have nothing to gauge what you do because of lack of experience. There is also lack of knowledge. Such as HTML, servers, how search engines work and so on.

Doing DIY SEO also leaves you not really knowing what you are doing. It generally involves following advice blind and there is plenty of conflicting advice out there. Just look in the archives here :)

[daveashe]

If you can get a good course on SEO then you stand a good chance if you do it DIY, but dont underestimate the time this will take. otherwise paying an SEO company money for increasing your rank, depending on their method may or may not work to increase sales on your website, other factors to take into consideration is how well does your site convert (how many visitors to get a product sale) and whether search traffic is what you want, perhaps social media or traffic from writing articles would be better, as you get backlinks which increase your ranking as long as you use the correct keywords.

[Mystro]

also I am concerned about giving someone free access to my site....with all my customers and sales details.


An Seo will not need access to your site, initially they will examine your site and should come up with a startegy, any changes needed can be made by yourself if you are confident to do so.

Its like all services in business, they will have to be paid for, without knowing what you do on the web its hard to say Diy or an expert, for instance if your business relies largley on the web for sales then its a no brainer, get it done proffesionaly, if the web is just a showcase for your products then have a play at Diy

One bit of advice i can give you is if you are to go down the expert route, take your time and research who does the work for you, cheap is not always best, paying more wont get you a better service, get to know people on forums like this as a good Seo will be recomended and theres a few on here.

Paul

[TheSlackers]

The way to look at SEO isn't as a cost it's as an investment, just like any advertising. What is the expected return on your £300 - £400 per month long term? That's what you need to figure out. If 6 months of SEO work is going to bring in a further 12 - 24 months of £2,000 - £4,000 per month increased turnover then it's probably worth it.

You can do some rough figures by sitting down with your SEO and mapping the expected visitors per month for say the next 12 months, then add in your expected conversions and average order values. To be fair it's a bit of guestimation but should give you some ideas as to the potential return.

Personally I've turned customers away in the past because these numbers just didn't stack up for them and I couldn't see how they would get a return.

[WeblinkPlus]

I.ve been quoted between £300 and £400 per month for someone to do this for me......this is a lot of money to me.......


How many customers would you need to cover this? How valuable is your time? How much do you spend on other forms of advertising? For DIY, how much time do you have to figure out what is good advice and what is bad? How much will it cost you if you get it wrong?

SEO takes time and therefore costs. If you have plenty of time, then spend it reading and asking specific questions. If not, then get some quotes.


also I am concerned about giving someone free access to my site

This is not necessary unless you can't do changes yourself. One would hope you would only work with someone you trusted anyway.

[iridessa]

Thanks for the advice....the guy I have been in touch with to do the SEO was recommended to me on a forum. But I have a couple of reservations.

1. he runs two sites of his own which although not in direct competition with me do sell a similar thing to my own. His sites are well ranked and traffic is excellent too...when I check them out . I have every confidence he knows what he is doing but worry about him having access to all my info.

The one thing which I worry about is that this guy wants full access to my site....something I only trust one other person with. Also in the conversation with him he was asking what I sell best, what my mark up is etc. . It may be he needs this to do the seo but it worried me.

I am confident he can get the results but worried to give him all my info. What do you think....am I being paranoid?

[WeblinkPlus]

IMHO there would be a conflict of interest there. I can think of no reason for having admin access for SEO purposes - it is not difficult to analyse a site and make a list of changes required without admin access.

[I, Brian]

The way to look at SEO isn't as a cost it's as an investment, just like any advertising.

Exactly right - you are paying for someone with more experience and knowledge to implement a more effective plan than you could yourself.

I don't think many people complain about paying for accountants to limit tax bills, as opposed to the "cheaper" way of doing it yourself - and not amny people represent themselves in court, even though it would obviously be "cheaper".

A skilled SEO company offers a skilled service beyond what you should be able to teach yourself - certainly not without your having to give up on building your business in order to learn SEO full time.

The danger with SEO knowledge is over confidence - I have literally seen people destroy their websites and penalise themselves on Google because they failed to fully understand exactly what they were doing.

[Ali-v-8]

just to add i agree, there is a conflict of interest.
also 300 to 400 quote is irrelevant because we don't know what you do.
if you do loans the thats waaaay too cheap if you do recycled Barbara Streisand dolls then too much.
I do disagree about not needing access to your website.
Back end systems on larger websites can have adverse effects on SEO

[WeblinkPlus]

I do disagree about not needing access to your website.
Back end systems on larger websites can have adverse effects on SEO

Interesting... The backend serves up content which is visible to all. If there is something wrong SEO wise, then this can be seen without backend access. Why would an SEO require backend access to evaluate the content? I can understand if SEO is to fix an issue, but not to audit for SEO puposes. I do admit to not having experience with very large websites, but I doubt the OP has a very large website :-)

[Ali-v-8]

regardless of size. research is key to correctly optimising a website.
I would rather know what i am dealing with before quoting.
What if the website clones all the meta tags and you are unable to make neccessary changes.
You will fail to do your job and what will your excuse be. "i didnt know"