Tips for the Unwilling SEO

An unwilling SEO is what I’ve ended up becoming.

Let me explain. I run a business that relies on the Web. So getting found online and in the search engines is crucial to my business success.

My small business faces conditions not unlike those of other small businesses. Many an entrepreneur or small business owner is in the same boat. We have limited funds and limited staff. Every search marketing expenditure has to count.

That’s where the unwilling part comes in.

As a business owner, I’ve had to teach myself about search engines, paid search advertising, keywords, on-page optimization, and other concepts important to bringing traffic to my website. Whether I wanted to learn or not! Although we use outside service providers to help with some of the work, especially those things that benefit from special skill, I and my staff have to do some of the work ourselves, in order to keep outside costs low.

But I’ve learned important lessons about how to best use my time and the time of my staff, and when to outsource search activities to outside experts. Let me share 3 of those lessons:

1) Learn basic SEO principles

One of the best investments of time I have ever made is to learn some basics of SEO. I am not talking about becoming a search professional – rather, I mean that you need to learn just enough to get by successfully.

Knowing some SEO basics will help you understand what it is best to retain in-house and what makes sense to outsource. Plus, you’ll communicate better with outside service providers if you have some basic knowledge.

To learn, I started by reading SEO blogs in the evenings and on weekends. Pretty quickly I sorted out the blogs that were writing for beginners and small businesses, from those writing for SEO professionals. That was crucial to avoid frustration. Those writing for other SEO professionals generally were talking at a level way above my head, or worse, sometimes they were talking about blackhat techniques. SEO blogs targeting small businesses, on the other hand, give you a level of knowledge that you can more easily assimilate and act on.

A good hub of SEO information designed for newbies and small businesses is Search Engine Guide. From there, take a look at the individual blogs of the Search Engine Guide writers – you’ll find lots of excellent and reliable resources.

2) Spend money to make money

As I look back, the business would have grown faster had I spent more on marketing and sales. Instead of focusing on my expense line, I really should have (a) set more aggressive revenue goals, and (b) worked backwards from there to figure out how to meet those goals and find the funds to invest in the right activities to meet those goals.

Allow your business to be guided by your revenue goals, instead of the goal of merely minimizing expenses.

To do this successfully, you will need to do some serious marketing planning, including detailed financial projections. Set revenue goals for the month, quarter and year. Then work backwards to break them down by what you need to do each week to achieve those goals. Understand exactly which search marketing activities, what they will cost, and the revenue dollars they will bring in if successful. You can find lots of free resources to conduct marketing planning at MPlans.com.

Once you create a detailed marketing plan, it becomes your road map.

3) Know your limitations

I’m all for saving money by doing as much as possible in-house. However, some things take too long to learn or require so many hours of knowledge that it’s not a wise use of time to try to master them.

For instance, if you do a lot of copywriting on your website or a lot of blogging, then it makes sense to learn about keywords for copywriting purposes. That’s knowledge you can use regularly and learning about keywords is an activity you can master with a reasonable amount of time.

On the other hand, technical site architecture issues and pay per click advertising may require the assistance of those who are experts. These are more technical or require daily regular attention. When you take into account the amount of time you would have to spend internally to master these areas, and what else it would keep you or staff from, it could be a favorable trade-off to hire it out.

Do this kind of trade-off analysis of time versus money for every activity. Soon you will have a good idea of what to outsource and what it makes sense to do internally.

In summary, these are important strategic issues to take into account to grow your business. In a way, we all have to become unwilling SEOs to some degree. But you can have the best of both worlds by learning how to balance between learning SEO, doing it yourself, and outsourcing where appropriate to get the best results.