I’m Frustrated with DIY SEO! Should I Buy Tools or Pay an SEO Company?
September 3, 2009 by Adam
Filed under SEO & Rank
After spending a couple frustrating hours of building links, submitting articles, researching key words and fine tuning the copy on their sites many of us are ready to throw in the towel. Search Engine Optimization seems pretty straight-forward, the thing that keeps most of us from doing it is the immense number of excruciatingly boring and time consuming tasks. There are links to build. There are directories to research. There are titles to write. There are directories to submit to. It’s all pretty exhausting.
So quickly, many of us come to one of two conclusions:
A. Purchase some tools that make the process easier.
B. Hire a company to do SEO for you.
Which of these two options should you put your limited budget towards. Let’s start by understanding what’s available.
Tools of the Trade
There are hundreds of great and useful SEO tools for free, and we’ve talked a lot about them in previous articles. There are only a few that we would actually consider paying money for:
1. WebCEO: www.webceo.com – The SmallBiz addition is about $200. WebCEO does a great job of researching keywords from your competitors’ sites. It also helps you analyze your own site for optimization and a whole lot more.
2. IBP: www.ibusinesspromoter.com – Standard edition is about $250. IBP’s specialty is submitting to directories and link building. It also contains useful tools for analyzing your site’s keywords and your competitors.
3. ISnare: - www.iSnare.com – iSnare is a great service for automating the article submission process. They submit your articles to over 1,000 article directories for a very small fee (under $2 per article). The only drawback is see with this service is that it takes them usually three weeks to approve an article and distribute it.
I’d also consider spending money on a few paid directories
1. Yahoo! Directory - http://dir.yahoo.com/ - $299 per year
2. Best of the Web - http://www.dmoz.org/ - $99.95 per year
Money spent on professional tools is quickly wasted if you’re not actually using them. All of the tools come with some kind of tutorials to get you up and running. I strongly recommend following the tutorials as soon as you purchase the tool. That way it won’t sit idling in your garage, wasting your hard-earned money.
Bring in the Pro’s
Just like owning a professional copy of Photoshop isn’t the same as hiring a professional graphic designer; Professional SEO tools won’t give you the same results as hiring a professional SEO firm. First you need to know what you’re buying. Price for professional SEO is based very much on how much they do. SEO firms fall into 3 categories:
• Premium Agencies ($10,000+ per Month)
Pros: they have several SEOs and they’ve worked with huge websites and in extremely competitive markets.
Cons: extremely expensive for the average company.
• Medium-Sized Agencies ($1,000-$10,000 per Month)
Pros: affordable for average companies. Several years of experience in very competitive markets.
Cons: maybe a little bit expensive for some startups. They won’t do such a great job if you are in an extremely competitive industry.
• Solo SEOs ($500 - $1,500 per Month)
Pros: very affordable.
Cons: most SEOs that charge this little are not that great. There are some exceptions, of course.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Whenever you hire a professional SEO company there are a couple due-diligence items we always recommend:
• Ask for Results – get a list of top 3 Google Rankings that they’ve worked on:
• Ask for References - The best SEO agencies will be happy to give you the contact information of at least 3 clients.
• Ask About Their Tactics – You want a firm that builds your reputation while raising your results.
This is a Guest Post by Zeke Camusio who is a serial entrepreneur, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company, an Internet Marketing agency with offices in Aspen, CO and New York. Let’s Do It!, his blog, is read by thousands of people all over the world.
Hey Zeke-
Great post and i would surmise that you are not alone in your thoughts. DIY SEO is a difficult task to tackle for most business owners. I also want to thank you for mentioning Best of the Web as one of the top directories to submit too; and let you know that the url for Best of the Web is incorrectly listed in the blog post. You have BOTW inadvertently listed as dmoz.org, but in fact the correct url is http://botw.org.
Additionally, BOTW just launched a September promotion for 20% off all submissions, so your readers might enjoy checking out the offer details: http://www.botwblog.org/promo-15-years-of-botw/
Thanks again for your informative article and support for Best of the Web!
Great article! Here are a few tips. There are ways of getting a great SEO for less if for example – you manage to get a SEO company who is experienced in your market (geography) and your industry. Perhaps the best ay to source them is to check who does SEO for your competition? A bit of checking inbound links will usually reveal that fact. Check who have done the greatest SEO job – who is your worst enemy in SERP – and fetch their SEO guys.
It does work – you bypass a number of initial SEO steps like Market Analysis etc. Your SEO guys actually become productive on the day 1.
For simple SEO, you don’t need help from search engine optimization firms. You can do it yourself, or if you know what is involved in simple on-site SEO, you can hire somebody to implement those. Read my blog post at http://www.classifiedsforfree.com/free/easy-seo-without-using-search-engine-optimization-firms/ for full details.
You make a good point about the fact that using professional software won’t always yield the same results as hiring a professional to do the work. One can have all the tools necessary, but it takes a solid skill set to make use of those tools, which is why one must decide whether they have the skills to put the tools to good use or if it would be better to bring in a pro.
There is an error I think in the line:
2. Best of the Web - http://www.dmoz.org/ - $99.95 per year
The trouble with SEO tool sites is most small and local business owners don’t know where to start or what the tool is really for. They also can’t pay the consultant prices. They are probably already running their own PPC campaign and really want to run their own seo campaign.
That is why I started Boostability. We take the same processes any SEO firm will do for them and make them so easy anyone can do it. Local online marketing isn’t that hard. It takes little work to rank well for local terms.
We also offer a free website analysis to help them know where to start and 5 Optimization Actions for free.
I think all seo company provides this facility, but I have used a company like eyecaremanual.com in the past and my experience with that company was outstanding.
We are researching and discovering lots of good ways to self-promote, but we also want to enlist the help of a good SEO company with a proven track record to augment our own efforts.
Well thanks for these resources and article. I personally would find WebCEO very useful with what I am trying to get done, although its a bit pricey.
honestly i would go with a software my self and i am doing it with my own knowledge to achieve the best target audience
Don’t buy the paid directory stuff, waste of cash … buy better links with high PR on related sites
Adam, your observation that many in the ~$1k range are ‘not that great’ is a brilliant observations but if you don’t consider it too rude, I’d like to expand on that for your readers.
If you assume the average web professional is charging $50/hr to cover costs etc. then $1k a month only works out to 20 hours, assuming he’s not paying for quality services. That means the most you can hope to get out of these entry level options is 20 hours a month without them taking advantage of great tools!
Quality SEO, for $10k a month sounds insane at first glance but even then, with $2,500 a month going out for external services (adWords, paid reviews, link building, press releases etc.) the agency your hiring is only promoting a business for ~150 hours a month.
Yes, $10,000 sounds like a lot but it’s an investment in building long term traffic similar to traditional print media which easily costs $7.50 an inch for a single day.
I think if you have knowledge of seo than you purchase tools or you familiar with tools otherwise hire a seo company for best decision.
SEO has become part of the website marketing and as such it needs a budget to invest in order to gain results. Competition is getting bigger and bigger on all fields, and different techniques and approaches to SEO are a must.
SEO is extremely important for any online business. So if you are having problems doing it yourself, definitely look into paying for some help. A lot of the time you can copy their strategies and keep the process going yourself.
Outsourcing can save you a heap of time. If you can find a good company or person to outsource to - then youre onto a winner. In my experience teaching someone how to do it works best - I think its very important you know how to do it yourself first though!
I agree that SEO is important but personally, I wouldn’t hire somebody to do that for me. I’d rather learn to do it myself so whatever site I put up, I’ll know what to do.
Hey Zeke, another good post. I decided to get some software and work on the SEO myself. Mind you I had no knowledge of SEO 3 months ago, but I really did it because I think it is a great skill to learn. So I am killing two birds with one stone.
As a side note, I have gotten some great tips from joining your linkedin Group “I bet we can find 1,000 entrepreneurs. The had some good nuggets in them.
This is a great article with some good advice and information for DIY SEO. My company http://www.boostability.com was created to make doing seo for your small/medium sized business easy and low cost. We do the homework for you and give you simple, easy to use tools that take away the drudgery of finding out where to link and what on-site changes are needed. We offer a completely FREE website analysis and we let you try out our system with our first 5 Optimization Actions being free. Check us out today. Click here for a free Website Analysis
I believe in SEO, but I always try and do it myself. Yes, it’s more hit and miss, but it’s cheaper, and I am learning how to do it myself, not getting other people to do it for me. I think if you want to do something, then you really need to get your hands dirty and learn how to do it, make mistakes, and fix them yourself.
DIY till I die baby!!! I do diy for everything. I actually watch DIY network every day..
thanks for sharing these great tools, i am using ibp and i think it is better than web ceo. according to ibp my site seo score is 89%.
Just an FYI, DMOZ is not a paid directory. There is no fee for submitting a site to it. I think that you mean BOTW?
I agree with Christopher Ross when he says that Premium SEO agencies are cheaper than they seem. He’s right that a lot of those funds go into PPC, sponsorships, link buying, press releases, paying copy writers, developers, etc. — I think that with SEO you really do get what you pay for. You also have to be careful with the $1000 a month range firms, some of them are scams. They are doing very little for you — if anything at all. They are sometimes using old and outdated approaches and principles and won’t deliver any tangible results. Or worse, if they are employing unethical solutions, then they may do more harm than good (black hat SEO).
you wrote ” 2. Best of the Web - http://www.dmoz.org/ - $99.95 per year ” i want to ask is dmoz is payed web directory?
Good advice on DIY SEO tools. WebCEO is a great tool for small businesses. On selecting the right SEO for your company, there is an SEO firm for every site.
Startups - Start with SEO industry best practices. Get an overall site analysis from an SEO consultant that includes things like usability and off site promotions to find out where you stand relative to your competition. Use tools like WebCEO, but spend a little money on upfront consulting and keyword research. SEO can be frustrating and overwhelming if you’re just getting started. A consultant will help guide you early on from making a lot of critical “black hat” mistakes that could cost you a lot of money down the line.
Small Businesses - All of the above. Plus, get a quality SEO firm to help you with the heavy lifting, such as link building and copy writing. Experienced man/women hours are needed here to start seeing results.
Larger Businesses - Hire an SEO firm to handle all your tactical work. Focus on your KPIs that drive your business. Expect results!
Takes time indeed and will be definitely longer to DIY but I think that you don’t have to use the service of an agency.
Then, it depends on your budget and if you are in the rush or not.
Good luck
For me, I go DIY if the keywords aren’t too competitive - for competitive keywords I do outsource link building activities.
One thing that most SEO forget is that it’s not all just about ranking/traffic - it’s also how you monetize the traffic. You could have very small traffic, yet bit profits (ie. longtail, but deep backend).
SEO is great for driving highly qualified, targetted visitors to your website, but if you don’t have a proven way of turning those visitors into customers you may find that you’re paying a lot of money for a small return.
If you know how well you’re site turns visitors in to customers you can calculate your return on investment and whether or not the results are worth the price.