You might think that doing your own search engine optimisation will save you money and help you get more informed about using the internet for marketing and advertising.  Yes, this could be true but there are some definite downsides to DIY SEO that you should be aware of, too.

Free Info is Often Outdated
SEO information is littered all across the World Wide Web. But info from 2006 might not help you all that much today.  It takes a lot of time and effort to sift through free SEO tips to find information that truly will educate you and help you with your business today and into the future.

Search Engines Keep Changing the Rules
It can feel wonderful to hit a milestone with traffic or to reach the top of the search engine results pages for the first time for a highly searched keyword phrase.  But that feeling could be very temporary. Search engine optimisation is a moving target. It isn’t static.  And search engines continually analyse the results and change them. They also change the rules from time to time so you might not just slip from spot one to spot two because of a new competitor or a competitor who ramped up their own seo efforts.  The search engines might suddenly knock you off the first page of their results altogether because of something you were doing that was perceived as ‘gaming’ the system. It can be a slippery slope and if you slip off into no-man’s land, a place where search engines blacklist you, it can be difficult to dig yourself out.

It Takes a Lot of Effort and Time to Make Sense of Website Analytics
Some website owners come up with an SEO strategy that they think will work and just work at it and hope for the best.  Your bottom line profits aren’t the only indicator of success. There’s golden info in your website analytics but it takes time, effort, and persistence to make sense of it.  You have to know how to get the info, how to interpret it, and how to turn it into action so that you tweak and re-tweak your SEO strategies to meet the needs of visitors.

New Methods of SEO and Marketing Are Hard to Keep Up With
There’s a whole industry based around SEO expertise. It’s not easy to keep up with. You need to dedicate a lot of time to staying up to date on industry changes and it takes time and consistent effort to react to those changes.

DIY SEO may be too much work for you to manage if you have to do it in addition to your regular role with your company. For that reason, it might be advantageous to consider looking into how much it will cost to get some SEO help. An SEO consultant can help you in a number of ways and can help you learn SEO without your having to spend the equivalent of a second shift doing it.

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Chris Jenkinson is an SEO consultant who would be happy to talk to you about your SEO goals and objectives. Visit http://www.jenkinsonassoc.co.uk for more info.