SEO to learn it or to outsource it?

[BartJr]

Hi guys, I'm looking for an advice.

I currently run a small company from home which is doing really well, however it's amazon & eBay based therefore I do not have a website for it (since there is no need). I'm currently drafting a business plan for the new business which is completely different from what I currently do and website will be required to obtain clients. Now I also got 2 other businesses in mind that I'm considering to start in future (5-8 years from now if there will still be a demand for it). Question is: Should I start learning seo myself? or should I just stick to outsourcing?

Ps. I'm aware that SEO is not an easy thing to learn and requires on-going learning but I won't have a problem with time required to keep up to date with it.

 

[Alan]

Ps. I'm aware that SEO is not an easy thing to learn and requires on-going learning

Actually it is quite easy to learn, the problem is that is constantly evolves, because EO is essential a battle between the website owner and search engine, the website owner wants to be listed about their deserved level and the search engine only wants to list deserved sites.

I won't have a problem with time required to keep up to date with it

Then you are not putting enough effort into your businesses, should ditch them and become and SEO company

 

[Businessquotes]

A bit of both, you should know enough about SEO to make sure the people/company you outsource to are doing a good job or not. Sales may be excellent but if they got there doing stuff that the search engines don't like it could be a flash in the pan.

 

[Nochexman]

Should I start learning seo myself?

Yes, it is your business and you need to understand how to get more new business.

 

[Alan]

Yes, it is your business and you need to understand how to get more new business.

Don't disagree that a business owner needs to understand at a high level marketing channels, but do disagree that you have to learn (implication is 'in depth') the channels.

If you are running a radio Ad, do you learn how to write compelling scripts and learn how to intonate your voice for most effect ( or what ever the pro's do ) of course not.

Same with SEO, unless you are a digital marketing company you don't need to learn SEO, you are well advised to know some basics like spam backlinks are worthless or damaging, that blog posting for the sake of it is pointless, shortcuts don't work and be aware they are far more cowboys saying they understand SEO than say cowboy radio ad producers.

But that is different, in my opinion, to learning the subject.

 

[StevePoster]

Learning SEO before outsourcing it will be the most appropriate because you will be aware of the work load that will be done in your outsourcing so you can set your goals and conversions according to your business needs.

 

[The Longley Sales Academy]

I'd say definitely learn it first. No one knows and will ever know your business as well as you do and any SEO activities should be customised accordingly. Find it out first for yourself what works and what doesn't and then, if you wish, outsource what works. I ended up doing it all myself, just because I enjoyed it

 

[marcus_bond]

Hi guys, I'm looking for an advice.

I currently run a small company from home which is doing really well, however it's amazon & eBay based therefore I do not have a website for it (since there is no need). I'm currently drafting a business plan for the new business which is completely different from what I currently do and website will be required to obtain clients. Now I also got 2 other businesses in mind that I'm considering to start in future (5-8 years from now if there will still be a demand for it). Question is: Should I start learning seo myself? or should I just stick to outsourcing?

Ps. I'm aware that SEO is not an easy thing to learn and requires on-going learning but I won't have a problem with time required to keep up to date with it.

If you've got the time to learn SEO for organic ranking, do it, it's a good skill to have, and the fundamentals don't change that much IMO. For paid search though...

 

[pbdesigns]

Understand it, but don't try and do it.

Learn about leverage. It's the only way you'll truly grow a business.

Trying to do everything yourself won't work. You only have a limited number of hours each day.

 

[pbdesigns]

If you are running a radio Ad, do you learn how to write compelling scripts and learn how to intonate your voice for most effect ( or what ever the pro's do ) of course not.

You'd be surprised just how many business owners try and write their own radio ads and even voice them! Rarely do they work though.

 

[alabica]

From experience, as a business owner who understands and knows how SEO works. The main ingredient is patience. SEO takes time to be effective. You may not have the time to sit and wait for your site to rank while also focusing, at the same time, on your core business. The thing to do is to learn the basics yourself. This will help you to direct, manage and get the best out of any consultants you may hire. SEO consultants will take you more seriously if they know you are not a complete novice to SEO.

 

[James Lees]

I think you need to do both. But perhaps not for the reasons, you were thinking:

1. You need to learn it, to understand it, to see how it will benefit your business.
2. Then because you understand it better, you will know how to find the best agency for you.

The SEO market is full of some very unsavoury characters. Their main angle is knowing that you know very little about the subject. Get better knowledge, beat the Cowboys.

Make sure you do outsource though. You will never know as much about the subject as a specialist.

 

[roundworksit]

SEO is a skill that you're always going to need at some point, and it's certainly not going anywhere. Even if you just learn top-level skills such as how to effectively do keyword research, and how you can optimise blog posts and website content for search engines, these are incredible skills to learn and are transferable across all sites.

Plus, if you're wanting to start businesses in the future then you're no doubt going to need SEO for when it comes to your new business's online presence. Outsourcing is great if you can afford, the last thing you want to be doing is counting the pennies and constantly checking your rankings when organic SEO is a long game. Hope that helps!

 

[Jessica A.]

A bit of both, you should know enough about SEO to make sure the people/company you outsource to are doing a good job or not. Sales may be excellent but if they got there doing stuff that the search engines don't like it could be a flash in the pan.

I agree with you. It's good to outsource because it takes off some of the work load but it's better to know the ins and outs of your business as well. You can get input from the people you hire but make sure that they're really good and know their stuff. You don't want to be learning from people who think they know it all but are actually still trying to learn the ropes themselves.

 

[This_note_is_legal_tender]

Keep to eBay and Amazon.... think of SEO companies like telesales executives in the movie Wolf of Wall Street before you hand over any money.

You need to have the SEO company sign a kick ass contract with clear targets, if they fail to meet them they don’t get paid... these guys are so full of BS it makes Sir Philip Green look like a flipping saint for cashing out of BHS and buying that beautiful 100m superyacht.

 

[Swansea SEO]

I have often found myself in a position where a client has asked for guarantees. From the outset, I express that the only guarantee I provide is a 'professional', 'structured' and 'transparent' service. Previous proven results and strategies are only offered to establish what is possible not what will come to pass. The industry and Algorithms are changing almost daily, and so nothing should be guaranteed. If that isn't information and our relationship is good enough to initiate a 'contract', then I have previously recommended that the client seek an alternative service provider.

 

[Nathan Hill-Haimes]

We are going through this exact exercise at the moment. We have a great understanding of SEO but it takes time, effort, and continued commitment. There's a lot to do to do it well write great content, outreach, promotion as well as on page factors. We're going to hire an in house SEO, the role is vital to our ongoing success and we feel it has to be a hire.

 

[Rober Williams]

Hi friend!

Being a businessman I would advise you to go for outsourcing as they have the expertise of doing this task & they will gradually but definitely get you better rank at google search page. If you really want to understand about SEO working then you should continue to learn about it.

Thanks

 

[Leonardo Gonzalez Dellan]

While reading about the SEO, it looks really easy but, to perform all the SEO activities precisely, you need to practice it several times. If by mistake your website gets penalized from Google then it is really difficult to recover from the penalty. So, I suggest you to hire SEO expert. If you want to perform SEO activities by your own then be careful while making the backlinks for your website.

 

[HazelC]

I recommend that you gain an understanding of it, but get someone else to do it so you can focus on your business and the running of your business.

 

[SEO Ninja]

Anyone can sit at a piano and bang out a few notes. It takes many years of learning and practice to to play the Rachmaninoff piano concerto 2. The same applies for SEO. All you will be doing is playing around with no real idea of the effect...

 

[Nochexman]

Anyone can sit at a piano and bang out a few notes. It takes many years of learning and practice to to play the Rachmaninoff piano concerto 2. The same applies for SEO. All you will be doing is playing around with no real idea of the effect...

Very few business owners on this forum need to play a Rachmaninoff piano concerto. However, what is helpful for them is to understand the basics of how SEO works and be able to work out what an SEO bull****ter sounds like.

If you understand SEO cause and effect then please share.

 

[SEO Ninja]

I agree what you say. Even a small amount of knowledge helps. I recommend to everyone to do some research on SEO before having work done. The context of the thread was about attempting to do the work yourself, a little knowledge then is not good. This is why i get people calling me saying that they have done some SEO and the site has now vanished. Very bad if this is their only income platform. Currently working today with a building supplier who did this and now paying to get rankings back. It will cost him a great deal in lost income due to sales having virtually stopped.

"If you understand SEO cause and effect then please share" sorry I don't understand this. Do you think it is impossible to understand SEO and all that we do is pure guess work?

Perhaps I miss understand, my apologies if I do..

 

[Cube Digital]

It is worth understanding. SEO can take up a lot of your day to day time, so maybe worth doing while you have time.

I know how to do my accounts - but it makes financial sense to have my bookkeeper do the work.

 

[Breffni Potter]

Just wrote a blog post on SEO and site speed, Two areas to think about very carefully.

 

[Scribe Copywriting]

What sort of web business is/was the OP setting up?

SEO isn't the best solution for every business - it depends on what the business is selling, and who they're selling it to. Sounds obvious, but SEO can only affect a site's exposure in relevant search results. This matters, because if your offering solves a problem that's rarely Googled, then it's not worth chasing the search traffic - your time and money will be better spent actually meeting and speaking to your target clients.

 

[Inva]

Since your plan is to also build other businesses, i would suggest you do not learn SEO beyond what is required to be able to evaluate your SEO guy/company. You should focus your efforts on growing your businesses instead of something which does not have to do with your product. Managing a business takes a lot of effort, so normally you should know enough technical stuff to evaluate the employees but not every technical detail of every possible job.

 

[Anderz]

I am as someone here already know and dislike etc. doing SEO after a great older course on the topic of building a web shop from scratch to succes. I can see the progress and my rankings increase by the work I apply.

Still I am looking into outsourcing some link building to a UK service that seems to know what they talk about. Pay or learn SEO it's up to you. You will still need quality work.

 

[yellowphin]

As a web design and digital marketing agency, we always feel it's helpful if our clients understand the basics of SEO before they purchase our SEO packages.

It helps because we can agree on reasonable KPIs and boundaries (we had a client once that created/moved pages without telling us, thinking they were helping, half-way through our SEO campaign, and it royally messed things up for a while).

Regardless of whether you outsource or learn it, always ensure you have a good understanding of it - it'll either make things easier for you and the agency/freelancer or it will save you a bit of money if you can do it yourself.

We'd advise to eventually leave it to trained professionals, however, - it can become time-consuming.

- Yellowphin

 

[Dr. O]

This is a sore point for me. We dumped a lot of money into a SEO firm for pre startup strategy. When I had an in depth look at the data they were providing us (keep in mind I've done 4 years in academic PhD, I'm not a newcomer to data analysis) it turned out to be utter useless crap. It's not rocket science, despite what some SEO "experts" would have you believe and remember there is no barrier to entry, everyone and their mum can start getting customers if they sell themselves enough.

Now thats not to say SEO is worthless, far far from it. You SHOULD learn it, at least the basics. So you can properly vet any company you'll contract. Ask for references and past work. As you grow you will need someone to take care of that aspect.

 

[garyk]

Its a commercial decision.

If you can pay a good SEO person £40 an hour but your time is chargeable at £70 an hour then it makes sense to do what you do and pay someone else to do the SEO.

 

[Inva]

Its a commercial decision.

If you can pay a good SEO person £40 an hour but your time is chargeable at £70 an hour then it makes sense to do what you do and pay someone else to do the SEO.

I think the expected results should be taken into account too, not just the hourly rate difference. If the results of this SEO would only amount to half the amount spent, then it's best to ditch it altogether (provided you can't find someone else to do it for less).

Big cost SEO optimizations... in our company the official position is, we don't think they are worth it anymore. Even if you reach #1, next month the algorithm will change and you are back to square 1 (which is what 5th page is). Focus your efforts in becoming an authority instead.

 

[bmt Promotions]

Just wrote a blog post on SEO and site speed, Two areas to think about very carefully.