To plagiarize the 80’s pop ditty, everybody wants to rule the world. When it comes to achieving any sort of visibility on Google, there’s not a great deal of room at the top. In fact, depending upon your industry, there’s no room at all, because the big players are firmly cemented in their page rank placement. There may be a bit of jockeying for position on page one of the search results, but you’ll almost certainly get the result you expect when you plug in “cat food,” “auto repair,” or “fashion,” into the search bar. If you are not atop the peak of Mt. Search, what can you reasonably expect from your home-grown SEO efforts? Should you DIY it, or pay for page rank?
I am a sole proprietor (translation: I can count the number of my employees on one hand, including my mother), of a boutique business (translation: minuscule), in a very niche market (translation: I have another job). Still, I have competition, and after nearly a decade in business, I felt a growing sense of irritation that when you searched for my keywords, you were lucky to find me at the bottom of the second page, but more likely, the middle of the third page. Even though I installed an out-of-the-box SEO WordPress plugin, I had no idea what to do with it beyond click “activate.” Since the plugin appeared to do nothing for me, I embarked upon a grass-roots campaign to get anyone and everyone I interacted with to link to my web site in articles or mentions of my business. I dutifully read everything I could about SEO (search engine optimization), and did all I could do that was within my limited technical skills to boost my page rank in the search results. A friend offered to use her preferred plugin to work some fo-real SEO magic on my pages, and I made sure to cram as much keyword-rich content into my blog posts, product descriptions, and ancillary shop pages as I thought the index bots would tolerate. My page rank didn’t budge. Quick…Somebody send out a search party. My web site is still missing without a trace.
About six months ago, with trumpeting fanfare, my web hosting provider announced that discount SEO services were available for a limited time. Hey, fifty bucks off is big money when you are a business barely perceptible on a microscope slide. I took a deep breath, and clicked “interested,” and subjected myself to the sales pitch. I was skeptical, but I was willing to give it a try.
After learning that SEO strategies are not what they used to be, thanks to new algorithms (translation: Everything you’ve done was a huge waste of time), and that in order to see real results the process can take several months (translation: We are invested in seeing to it this takes as long as possible, since we bill you monthly). They claimed to use a panoply of techniques that should slowly but surely raise your visibility on the search engines, which should result in more web site traffic.
Skipping, skipping, skipping (translation: I don’t’ want to confess to the blistering monthly interrogation to which I subjected the SEO team), after four very expensive months, I am now ranked at spot five for my keywords on the first page of the search engines I care about. Did it work? Yes. Was it worth it? That depends upon how you define success. If your metric is selling enough product to have paid for the service, and then some, only you can answer that. What happens after a potential customer lands on your page is up to you. I broke even. If your metric for success is page visits, then it worked wonders. I have more unique site visitors than I have ever had, and my business may benefit in other ways. There’s something to be said for more eyeballs on your business name. If I could afford to, I would continue the service, and I would recommend that you do. Perhaps the best strategy for small business owners is to pay for SEO in the months before your busiest season. Or, perhaps the most profitable solution for you would be a combination of paid SEO services, DIY link building, and targeted ads. Or, maybe just boosting your Facebook and Instagram posts would be sufficient.
My observation is that entrepreneurs tend to fall into two categories when it comes to spending money. They either throw every penny they have at a problem, thinking that they can fast track success by buying it, or they spend as little as possible, thinking that if they do it all themselves, and don’t spend a dime, the growth will happen naturally. Eventually. Well, eventually is right. In my case, eventually took years. The answer, I think, is somewhere in the middle. Spend something, at least on the tasks you know are not your best skills. It’s a cliche that entrepreneurs wear many hats, but it’s also key that you know your strengths. If self-serve SEO is not in your wheelhouse, then leave it to the pros, and be prepared to pay handsomely for page rank. Translation: It’s not as cheap as hiring your mother.
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