written by
Jeremy Poland

Agency SEO vs DIY SEO

SEO 14 min read
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Hello and welcome to the DIY SEO Show with your host, Jeremy Poland. Today we are going to break down the comparison between hiring an agency to do or handle your S. C. O. And doing S. C. O. Yourself. Right the onset that's discussed the third option. Which is a terrible option. And that's the do no S. E. O. Approach. If someone does know S. E. O. For the organization for their business, they're going to have very limited and very distressing online results, it's it's absolutely essential that somebody does S. C. O. And I'll break it down what exactly I mean by do S. C. O. But somebody is taking some regular sets of actions for the purpose of S. C. O. And online presence building for your organization. Ok. So the two main routes that people take our hiring an agency, we could put a slash they're hiring a consultant or freelancer to do S. C. O. For you. We can call all that full service S. C. O. Or taking S. C. O. Activity in into you know, your own um arena without hiring somebody to do S. C. O. Officially. So D. I. Y. S. C. O. Is when an organization takes S. C. O. Initiative and takes S. C. O. Action. Using some sort of plan to to do S. C. O. Without hiring or having access to an official S. C. O. Person inside the organization. Okay. Let's start with agency. S. EO we'll cover the pros and cons. I mean, first of all, many large organizations. Large sites. Large entities are going to use an agency for their S. E. O. And other facets of their online marketing and that's just an expense in a cost and investment that they built in. Um you know to their um their financial strategy. So large organizations often can afford agency price tags, agency investments their already large or they already have a solid base of revenue and they can handle the the expense. So a pro is you get two out when you hire an agency you you do get to outsource or at least think that you're outsourcing your S. C. O. To somebody else. So it's not something that you're having to do or spend much time or focusing on and for large organizations or the larger price points I think S. C. O. Can often be very effective meaning that big players typically with with big budgets get medium to big results from S. C. O. Campaigns. Now here's the con I feel like most of the time or many times smaller organizations hiring smaller marketing agencies get low to medium results from their investment. And that leads to some of the anc's that's widespread where people and small businesses said yeah I hired a company that did S. C. O. And then nothing really happened. Sometimes there wasn't enough time investment. There wasn't any sort of participation from the client side but many times the small agency or SEO consultant or freelancer who was hired just frankly didn't have the firepower to or you know the know how or the you know the the set of data and and back link library to to really um effect a change. Other times they just frankly don't put forth much effort. A con for hiring an agency is often one pitfall is sometimes an agency will solve on site S. C. O. Issues which are usually relatively easy fixes for someone in the know or something that can be outsourced at a very low price point. And then they won't really do the offense related uh task of building a brand online which is building pack links and improving a social presence. And and so they're really from the from the client or the small business perspective there isn't a whole lot of game meaning their rankings don't change much or at all. Yes they have a slightly faster loading site, they now have all tags, they now have metadata and those are nice little check boxes but often without the back link being built then that small business is going to have low level of results. And and so that can be a con for uh the marketing agency column. Marketing agencies back to a pro uh sometimes do really have good relationships or good systems with blogs or pr outlets and they can get some solid promotion or and and back link connections for their clients. But again this is usually at the larger scale of things and the larger price point levels. So um in summary I would say that agencies work really well or dedicated freelancers with medium to larger organizations. Um They have a you know a medium level of success or medium probability of success. Um Cons are sometimes smaller organizations can weigh over spend what they could have done on their own and um and achieve lower results than frankly they could have achieved on their own. Um Akane. It's important to remember that people uh the old adage is often true. Nobody can can do what you can do. You know nobody can do it like you can because you know your organization, you know particular assets, ideas, abilities, partners, connections, industry related resources that that a marketing agency just cannot understand because they're not fully in your world. They can get a glimpse of your world and the good ones will take the time to to get acclimated to your world and your niche and your company and and get a sense of your assets meaning your marketing related assets and uh positive things your company has or has done or intends to do that. Um That can be harnessed for S. T. O. And online pr game. So um in summary an agency can definitely work but it's something that's got to be fully budgeted for. It's something that's got to be managed well a tip for managing an agency is to ask questions like what's what will be your back link building strategy for our organization. How many back links do you project will be built on a monthly basis? Or a six month basis? Or an annual basis? Um You know, will you send me ranking reports which is typically the main metric um for success or improvement in S. E. O. Is ranking reports, but you also could ask for traffic reports, see how traffic is going up. Um I provide a list when I'm doing full service work. I provide a list of the back links that I built in a google sheet for that particular client so they can see and follow along in real time. I share my sheet on a an ongoing, consistent basis so it's possible to um for people to fall along. So I would ask for ranking report, traffic report and then a list of back links being built on top of a back link building strategy. What you're asking them is how will you make my website stronger? How will you make our domain authority increase so that we rank higher if traffic is also a part. I'm sorry if content is a part of of what you need the agency for then of course you discuss that with them. But many times I'm talking I'm working with small businesses who aren't really building any new content. We're just strengthening their site. Doing a little bit of enhancement to existing content fixing on site. S C. O. Problems or you know, deficiencies and just really building the back link so that they rank higher. All right now, let's talk about D I Y C O pros and cons. So a pro for D I Y C O is again, nobody can do it. Like you you're you have the most vested interest or you or somebody in your organization who's trusted in quality has a high degree of interest and um and commitment to the organization. And frankly, you're gonna come up with unique ideas, especially once you get acclimated to what it is that you're doing. So doing your S. C. O. Means fixing or taking a look at fixing some on site. SeO issues, we cover that more in other episodes. It means building back links and beginning to strengthen your site. It means understanding who your online competition is, what three or four other websites are out ranking your website for key terms that are important to you and your in your business and and it means using and managing a few tools in a few reports. So if that sounds like something that you could do or want to do, uh D I S C. O. Is a system to make all of this work more effectively, essentially. It's our playbook and you can plug and play in particular uh using our back link library, you can begin begin building back links really effectively. We have a custom google sheet that you get, that you can begin recording your back links and we show you how to um scope your competition and understand where you are. So DIY SEO can be wonderful because nobody, nobody cares like you care and you truly can do it. Another pro is the cost is 1/5 to 1/10 of of what a marketing agency would charge. And so it's something that can be done with a by a smaller organization, something that just doesn't have a lot of money to spend or doesn't care to spend a lot of money. A. D. O. S. C. O. Is a great tool or I'm sorry, activity or endeavor for someone on your team that's administrative, that's in house, that's an intern that's got some desk time where they can can do some of this work. It's designed to be twice a week, one hour to 1.5 hours a time where people are building back links, it's setting up online profiles, checking their emails to verify connections with websites that they've already set up. So D. I. Y. Is very manageable in its low cost O. Con is it takes time and it takes effort. It really does. This D. I. Y. S. C. O. Is not um some sort of like automated fix. It's not a, you know, press five buttons here and then all the wheels and all the machines are turning, it takes a little bit of thought, it takes a little bit of acclamation difficulty level is is really the level of like playing playing a video game online that's fairly complex. Or you know doing some kind of complex online task like S. C. O. For I'm sorry Excel formulas or uh it's it should be within reach of really anyone who's a modern working professional. Uh So there's any any younger person any millennial on down who's savvy online doing doing cool things and making video. S. EO is something that they can do with just a little bit of guidance, a little bit of cutting through the weeds. You know a little bit of tour guiding um from either from online you know from from just gleaning and gathering training or from using a system like D. I. Y. S. C. O. Akane of D. I. Y. S. C. O. Or just sort of starting off on your own to do uh S. C. O. S. Some people get caught in the weeds, they have analysis paralysis. They sort of over research. They listen to experts, many of whom are our digital marketing experts or S. C. O. Professionals talking primarily to other digital marketers or other S. C. O. Professionals. So that's sort of a high level conversation a lot of times what you see online on youtube as you search. And so the small business owner who's in Ohio who you know he and his wife are together working on their S. T. O. They're probably they're likely gonna get bogged down with some of the complexities of these articles and and maybe potentially have a hard time knowing okay what actions can I take when someone steps up and does D. I. Y. S. C. O. Uses our system, it's very very clear what what the key action is. I mean the number one action is building back links. If we were to sum it down into one single thing, we also provide a set of action steps month by month, you know, do this, set up this with your logo, create this kind of this email, make sure your social will set up. We've got a nice little checkup, Sorry checklist that you can go through manageable but profound action steps for digital marketing. Uh So that's super helpful. Um So if if you are if you're thinking about doing it online you definitely need to uh avoid the pitfall of analysis paralysis. That's a major con another con of D. O. S. D. O. S over tool access people subscribing the tools they don't use buying tools, tools are helpful. I use tools, I love tools, I'm guilty of over tooling and seeking out on tools. It's important to recognize that really no tool can substitute for the action in particular building back links or getting some quality content out there, tools can help evaluate your content, give suggestions for your content. Um There are automated ai writers now that can write content for you. Very helpful. You still need to touch the text yourself. Humanize it add to it and have a sense of what it is you would like to cover in your article about killing roaches because you're a pest control company. So a few bulleted items underneath questions that people ask about roaches. How long does it take to kill them? How many how how much does the treatment cost? Is the treatment safe? You have to go inside my house, outside my house. What time of year are they bad? Those kind of bulleted items underneath? Uh The overall page title can really help inform either an air writer or um any human writer and help you get out good content. So back to the top on D. O. S. C. O. It the pros are no one cares like you care, the cost is low, you really can achieve the same or better results. The cons are takes effort. Some people are gonna can get lost in the weeds um of analysis. Paralysis over research. Talking about jargon terms and stressing about their schema and and making sure they have the best and right all tags when they're not building any back links and that's what strengthens the site or they're not thinking at all about their content and what content they're missing. So we show all of this in the I. O. S. C. O. The system. Uh So that's that's fully available. We'd love to connect with you about that agency. S. C. O. Has some good con some good prose but some serious cons it can be very powerful when the right agency is engaged and usually a higher price point is paid. And um and there's a fairly knowledgeable and determined client on the other end. Um If the client is distracted busy small lower budget agency is lower a sort of newer smaller etcetera than I I feel like the potential of success goes down for uh for that client to get the results that that they would like or that they're paying for. So um yeah overall those are the thoughts that's how agency S. C. O. Versus D. I. Y. S. C. O. Breaks down and I really hope this gives you insight that you need and equips you for making this type of decision yourself. Again we are here on the D. I. O. S. C. O. Side. I try to be as objective and fair as I can be to the to the agency world because I've seen some great things and I've also seen a lot of disappointment. And so that's why people roll towards doing it themselves for connecting with with a service or something like D. I. Y. C. O. Thanks so much for listening. All the resources will be in the show notes. This is the D. I. Y. S. C. O. Show with your host jeremy Poland. And we look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. Thanks and God bless.

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