Do you outsource your SEO or do it yourself?

Not sure how to post a poll, but I was wondering out of the members here do you outsource your SEO to somebody else or do you do it all yourself?

I'm getting to a stage where I might bring in an SEO company, I've dealt with a few Indian companies and off my experience I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole so I'm thinking of going with a UK company who don't outsource their work to India.

I find I'm fairly good at SEO, but as I look to expand my number of sites it's getting a bit tedious and Google seems to be making things harder all the time.

My main worry is, handing my keywords and basically my business secrets to an SEO company and some bright spark in the SEO company seeing it and trying to copy it.

So what do you lot think and what do some of you on this site do? DIY or external SEO company?

DIY imo - hire staff, train them and keep a strict quality control over the whole process.

I have experience with 3-4 'high end' UK SEO Companies and have to say the quality is abysmal.

They all seem to have a decent knowledge base, but when it comes to development of assets, delivering on goals, and providing quality work they were all full of ****. Some of the work done was akin to work that I could have hired someone on oDesk to do for 1/10th of the price.

I think you're going to know all this RacingJim, but in the interests of someone reading in future that might be thinking the same thing, here goes...

I think the main thing to look at with this is - what do you mean by SEO. What scope.

On page? Off page? Everything?

From an on page perspective - personally I wouldn't trust anyone (except a fellow affiliate/webmaster who I knew could handle it) to handle building of my site/pages. Certainly not an 'SEO' company.

But that may partly be because I don't work in high budget circles. There may well be some companies who you could go to (with deepish pockets) and say 'build me a (fast and responsive) site about xxxxx - do the keyword research - fill it with content - written, images, videos, name all the pages cleverly with good titles and page descriptions' and they'd do it well. In fact I know there are...but these guys are high class professionals and 'deep pockets' would be the operative word(s). Go to anyone cheaper and there's a fair chance you'll be throwing money away....or at least it would be a toss up on whether you were.

Of course 'deep pockets' to one person may not mean quite the same as 'deep pockets' to another. To put it another way, if you're pulling in plenty of income already, then paying someone to scale it up is a reasonable approach (if you know they can guarantee the results).

Off page gets a lot more complex. Are you looking for someone to do link building, posts, social stuff, Pinterest, Facebook, Youtube videos etc etc etc etc. Or just elements/subsets of those.

Bottom line - unless you find someone who can prove they know what they're doing, I'd say it's risky letting the control go and giving them carte blanche to just do it.

As we all know, going with any company that sends out spam emails saying 'I can do SEO' means (most likely) your site is done for, and/or your money is just going down the drain and the results will be ineffective (if you're lucky).

Going with any company that has spelling or grammar mistakes on their website would be an equally dubious decision.

All in all - from where I'm standing (the low-medium budget perspective, remember) - I'd say that giving all of it away would be a questionable decision. Keeping control and paying others to do some parts of it (ie experts in specifically those parts) would be most likely to pay potential dividends....and even then it would be a good idea to be overseeing exactly what they were intending to do before they did it.

I've used many seo companies over the years, and am unable to recommend any to you. In the end, I'd rather do the seo work myself. I'm tired of receiving spun articles, dodgey links and badly written reviews.

95% of SEO is common sense - and the other 5% is snake oil. I've yet to see a solid SEO presentation that is groundbreaking. It's all pretty basic stuff. I guess if you are a small business that simply does not get the internet at all then a basic SEO package will help with exposure and allow your website to be found by google.

But if you are already web literate, creating your own sites, and comfortable with basic HTML, then I struggle to see the value that SEO companies are providing.

Have never outsourced SEO to anyone - but then I don't go out chasing (or buying) links - so I'm struggling to understand exactly what an outsourced SEO company would do for me. Exactly what is it that you find so time consuming that you need to outsource? What activities?

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Originally Posted by TheGooner

95% of SEO is common sense - and the other 5% is snake oil. I've yet to see a solid SEO presentation that is groundbreaking. It's all pretty basic stuff. I guess if you are a small business that simply does not get the internet at all then a basic SEO package will help with exposure and allow your website to be found by google.

But if you are already web literate, creating your own sites, and comfortable with basic HTML, then I struggle to see the value that SEO companies are providing.

Have never outsourced SEO to anyone - but then I don't go out chasing (or buying) links - so I'm struggling to understand exactly what an outsourced SEO company would do for me. Exactly what is it that you find so time consuming that you need to outsource? What activities?

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You're probably right mate, I guess I'm a lazy person at heart, I wanted to be able to say that every aspect of my business could be carried on if I left it, i.e. if i wanted to sell it or take a break.

But ultimately it seems the 2 things I can't outsource are SEO, both on page i.e. high quality content which i have really struggled to find anyone for, and off page i.e. building high quality links and getting them at a good price in the right niches and correct keyword/non-keyword percentages.

Some of the main joy I've had is where I have been number 1-2 in Google for keyword X or keyword Y, rather than going for general traffic grabbing strategies across large ranges of keywords or on the social networks, so it would appeal to me if SEO company X could say to me, here's our other successful rankings, we can get you these rankings also if you follow Formula Y. But I guess in reality this is just me dreaming.

I guess the activities would mainly be link building and advice on the exact % links to home page inner pages etc etc, SEO seems to change by the week and I don't have time to keep up with it all,so I guess I'd be looking for a company to be right on top of the latest tips, tricks, changes etc to Google algorithms. Also on page analysis of my content and advice I suppose on what methods might be working right now in terms of on-page factors to get those all important number 1-2 rankings. So yeh, I'd be looking for high level guys and be willing to pay fairly high level prices for a high level service, but again, it seems by my own experiences and others that in reality this product might not exist.

I would stay away. Joe. I have gotten hurt out sourcing. Try out some well written press releases and some video marketing. I am expanding slowly with my focus on marketing, not Seo. If you are looking for link building strategies link research tools has some good tools. Some people love l r t some hate it, but the people that told me about rank very high consistently for the most competitive keywordsk

Its better to do it for yourself than outsource it because SEO needs knowledge, patience, quality and hard work.. Most of the seo companies will never and can not do such quality because they have to meet and study your product or offer. Honestly they have no time for it, they just pick your money leaving you in hope that you will rank better or great one day.. Miracle will maybe happen but..

Learn seo for yourself and work it on your own..



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

''so I guess I'd be looking for a company to be right on top of the latest tips, tricks, changes etc to Google algorithms''

I don't believe any of them can do this. But the good ones will be able to get reasonably close.

PM if you want some names.

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]''so I guess I'd be looking for a company to be right on top of the latest tips, tricks, changes etc to Google algorithms''

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My main concern would be that today's tips and tricks will become tomorrow's penalties. I'm with the DIY crowd or for hiring someone in-house you can keep an eye on. Also, the better your content the less you will need to rely on SEO. The money may be better spent elsewhere.

+1 on simmo! & pinkytoe

Yes, I think it is my outsource income. I do it for myself.

during the last year I learned a lot about seo and today I think that I got the idea of what the search engines want to see and what not. It was a long period of trial and error but it was worth it. Currently I try to make as much as possible by myself

It's an odd mix for me. All my links these days are naturally built due to my own content or work for other sites so certainly that side of SEO I suppose I deal with myself, but I did bring in these guys - http://horseshoeagency.com/ - to help get the onsite/social media stuff on track and they were very good at it (especially where I've actually got round to implementing their advices lol).

I have actually worked for two SEO Agencies and can tell from personal experience that what we did was not something you would really want to buy for your site if you are serious about it. We did not scam anyone or something like that but it hat little to do with real seo. In a few words, we created hundreds pages of content for them (automatically with our own "trick"), changed their theme to a somewhat seo-friendly one and then built hundreds if not thousands of free links (directories, bookmarks, etc.)... I know, shocking to hear but thats the truth. :)

The best thing to do is learn SEO yourself. Then hire people to create blog posts, or if you want article sharing and blog comments. In this way you can handle the anchor percentage and diversity of your backlinks yourself.

I do all of mine myself and and have pretty good luck doing so. I know what you are feeling saying with so many sites you cant keep up. I am in the same situation but I personally do not think outsourcing is the way to go. If I decide to do anything I will hire someone so I can control what they are doing. SEO companies are expensive and in my experience do not do anything I cant. I have been giving serious thought to hiring someone that can do everything I can. Do SEO but also add to content. I just dread training the person.

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Originally Posted by UltimatePokerBonus

I do all of mine myself and and have pretty good luck doing so. I know what you are feeling saying with so many sites you cant keep up. I am in the same situation but I personally do not think outsourcing is the way to go. If I decide to do anything I will hire someone so I can control what they are doing. SEO companies are expensive and in my experience do not do anything I cant. I have been giving serious thought to hiring someone that can do everything I can. Do SEO but also add to content. I just dread training the person.

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Yeh same regarding the training, I dread trying to teach someone stuff and also worry about someone seeing my business from the inside and stealing ideas and trying to copy/do it themselves.

I'm hiring someone to do content and seeing if I can take a bit of weight off myself in that respect.

I am actually considering this myself as i'm pushed for time. The forum responses appear to be more in favour of not outsourcing. Has nayone had a good experience with an outsourced company?

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Originally Posted by thedietberger

I am actually considering this myself as i'm pushed for time. The forum responses appear to be more in favour of not outsourcing. Has nayone had a good experience with an outsourced company?

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They all promise you the work, most don't produce results, and accept your money. The hard truth is that it takes a lot of time, money, and energy to figure out what works for you to rank well.


I consider myself pushed for time as well, I know the feeling, that is why I keep building sites.