A recent study published in early 2018 by BrandMuscle has revealed that only 3% of small and medium-sized businesses in the United States are hiring outside experts or agencies to do the marketing of their businesses, and more than 60% choose to do the marketing. themselves, or relying on internal “specialists”. The study also mentioned SEO or search engine optimization as one of the most popular local business marketing tactics for SMBs because they consider it to be one of the easiest strategies to implement. However, the report’s authors concluded that small and local businesses were getting miserable results and a poor return on their investment by taking the do-it-yourself route, especially when it comes to SEO.
So why is it very ineffective for local business owners to try to optimize their web properties themselves?
I have collected 5 reasons why it is not only ineffective but also risky for a small business owner to go the DIY route when it comes to optimizing their websites, Facebook pages, Instagram, etc. for search engines.
1. SEO is a constantly changing landscape and what works today may not work tomorrow. In other words, it is not for everyone. As a business owner, we recommend that you spend whatever free time you have trying to improve your business so that you can get great reviews, not hang around trying to learn the latest website ranking tactics or how to get over the latest updates. of Google. or the Bing search algorithm.
2. Bad SEO can harm rather than help your search engine marketing efforts. Search engines, especially Google, have been known to penalize websites for over-optimizing or using spamming tactics designed to trick their system. In fact, for local businesses, not optimizing your website at all can be better than, for example, spraying fraudulent backlinks all over the web to your web properties, or over-optimizing them.
3. Choosing the DIY route can trap you in a spiral of skills (you learn to do one thing today and tomorrow it will take you to another burrow) and a new learning curve. Before you know it, you could spend more time learning the web optimization game than running your business. New tactics come up almost every month on how to rank websites or drive traffic to your websites. You want to focus on your business, not chasing visitors to your web pages!
4. While your web properties are a good way to attract new prospects to your business, most experts agree that to multiply your profits, it would be best to spend your time “wowing and wooing” your existing clients. SEO is not the game changer that is often billed, especially for local businesses. According to marketing guru Jay Abraham, author of “Stealth Marketing: How to Outperform, Outsmart, and Market Your Most Formidable Competitors … Before They Know What’s Affected You,” the key to staying ahead in competitive times is to hone. your marketing strategy. – “to make sure new customers are arriving, old customers returning and customers buying more.”
SEO will provide you with new clients, but these are in many cases “bargain hunters”, rarely your ideal clients. You get them through referrals, or through word of mouth marketing …
5. Lastly, even assuming you did the hard work and learned the ropes of search engine optimization, really good SEO should give you phenomenally better results, plus outsourcing to a good provider is always a great return on investment. because it saves you that. the most precious commodity: time. Time that you can use to get to know your customers better, communicate with them, improve their experience process when they buy from you.
In closing, as a small business owner, you need to learn all you can about web search optimization, just to find out what’s good for you and how to tell good SEO from bad. But you can earn more by outsourcing this part of your marketing efforts; both in terms of time you can save and costly mistakes you can avoid and ultimately to ensure a good return on investment.
