TL;DR: We highly advocate for a DIY SEO approach, but small businesses need to balance self-initiative and in-house efforts with professional guidance.

Is SEO easy? To some extent, yes. Understanding basic concepts such as keyword research and relevant title tags is fairly simple. Can you do your own SEO? Of course.

We encourage a DIY strategy to handling small business websites, marketing, and SEO. Yet we also know the immense value of early training and the wisdom in seeking professional help at the first sign of a roadblock. A balanced approach ensures your business is well-equipped to manage your online presence.

You can draw an analogy between mastering search engine optimization (SEO) and learning sports like tennis or swimming. Hitting the ball over the net is the first step, but you’re not ready for the club championship. Being able to float in a backyard pool is a good skill to have, but it takes considerable training before swimming long distances in open water. Or if you play a musical instrument: learning a few chords on a guitar or scales on a piano is akin to optimizing a site’s title tags. Attaining proficiency in any skill requires guidance from experts who are willing to provide tough feedback.

You and your team built a great website, filled it with helpful content, and followed best practices, so why is the site lagging in search results? It isn’t because SEO principles are complex. And it isn’t Google’s fault.

Most SMBs struggle with online presence due to one of two reasons: (1) ineffective hiring—inexperienced marketers don’t know what they don’t know—or (2) an over-reliance on a “do-it-yourself” approach by the business owner or in-house team.

In regards to hiring, we offer in-depth articles covering how to evaluate SEOs and how to spot bad SEO. Here we explore why a strictly DIY approach is holding you back.

DIY SEO is easy…right?

Yes, certain aspects of SEO are easy and many small businesses can manage their online presence on their own. But unless your goal is to become an SEO, a purely do-it-yourself approach to your digital strategy is not in your best interest. Tailored support for your specific situation will always get you further faster.

Years ago, as a new homeowner, I decided against regular pool maintenance services. Instead, I opted for a one-time session with a reputable pool company. The training was tailored to my pool and its specific volume, finish, and filtration system. I printed out and laminated the step-by-step instructions, then successfully managed pool maintenance myself for years. Attempting to learn this on my own would have been costly, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Most DIY pool owners struggle, but my experience was a breeze from day one thanks to the expert instruction.

DIY SEO issues stem mainly from: (1) outdated or misleading information and (2) a gap in the ability to apply general concepts to specific situations:

Misinformation: The misinformation problem is significant. There’s a wide range of quality in both free and paid learning materials, making it difficult to discern credible advice from misleading SEO information. Many self-proclaimed experts “learned” from dubious sources, only to turn around and create a YouTube channel or an “SEO course” to sell their “expertise.” Beginners are teaching beginners. This creates a cycle of perpetual misinformation, such as the notion of a minimum word count for SEO.
The aggressive marketing of SaaS platforms is also partly to blame. These platforms encourage the idea that SEO is easy and the only missing link is their software. But most SMBs do not need paid SEO software to improve web visibility.
Application gap: The disconnect in applying proven SEO concepts to your own website can be attributed to several factors, ranging from the nature of the learning material to cognitive biases affecting self-assessment.

Why your website isn’t performing

So if SEO is easy, where is the disconnect? After training hundreds of small businesses over the past decade, here are common reasons why DIYers and beginners struggle:

Lack of practical experience: SEO courses provide knowledge in a structured and theoretical manner, which is important for learning SEO fundamentals. However, applying the concepts to your real-world site takes hands-on experience. Novices might understand the theory behind design and user experience, but can lack the practical skills to effectively implement best practices on their own sites.
Cognitive biases: Cognitive biases like the Dunning-Kruger effect lead individuals with limited knowledge or skills in a domain to overestimate their ability. If you’ve ever taught swimming, then you know that once a young child experiences a bit of success in the pool, their confidence dangerously outpaces their abilities. Similarly, after learning the basics of SEO, beginners usually believe they understand more than they actually do. This makes it hard to identify gaps in their knowledge, apply what they’ve learned, or realize when they need support.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy is a cognitive bias that compels people to continue with a project when they’ve invested a significant amount of resources (money, time, effort) into it, rather than because of its current or future value. A training course might be a dud, but if it was expensive you may find it challenging to abandon it.
Inability to objectively assess own work: It’s difficult for almost everyone to critically assess their own work, especially after pouring hours of effort into it. An emotional investment clouds judgment, making it difficult to identify flaws in design, structure, or content that are clear to others.
Even experienced, larger organizations can struggle to view their website from an outsider’s perspective and identify areas for improvement that are obvious to a fresh pair of eyes.
Overwhelm and information overload: SMB SEO is straightforward, but the breadth of SEO can be overwhelming and the sheer amount of information available can lead to paralysis by analysis. The proliferation of questionable content further muddies the waters. Beginners can be unsure of where to start or how to prioritize improvements.
Misapplication of concepts: Understanding a concept in theory and applying it in practice are two different skills. For instance, DIYers might recognize the importance of internal linking, but not know how to structure links effectively. And beginners often believe they need to do “all the things” leading to unnecessary complication and over-optimization.
Specificity and context: SEO resources provide general principles and best practices, but every business is unique. Most people struggle to translate the general advice into specific actions on their particular site, especially when they face uncommon challenges or operate in a niche market.
Feedback and iteration: If your business relies on content marketing, then effective SEO for your site will include testing, feedback, and adjustment. Beginners usually lack the experience to interpret data from analytics platforms, hindering their ability to iterate and improve their SEO strategies over time.
Technical issues: Most sites fall short because of the do-it-yourself roadblocks listed above. However, in rare cases, sites may run up against a Google visibility issue—in this particular situation, websites that seek expert help recover quickly and those that don’t have floundered for months or even years.

How do you solve these issues?

To bridge the gap, you need to hire professional help. Period.

You likely have no qualms about paying a personal trainer or a music teacher to improve on your hobbies. When it comes to your house and car, you hire roofers and mechanics to keep things in solid working order. Running a business, is not the time to DIY. You or your team will either spend a considerable amount of time doing your own SEO—watching videos, sifting through forums, and learning through trial-and-error—or you can simply hire someone to give you proper, targeted guidance and get back to running your business.

Experienced web professionals (i.e. not your summer intern) have had the benefit of working with a wide range of businesses, industries, and challenges. Experts bring a wealth of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t based on years of experience. Mentorship in the form of consulting or tailored training gives you and your team instant insights and constructive feedback.

If your site is underperforming, a professional site review brings an objective perspective. A quality SEO can quickly spot mistakes. They can uncover opportunities you’ve overlooked, suggest optimizations to improve your site’s performance, and align your website’s strategy with your business goals.

The goal is not to make you dependent on SEO experts, but to provide a solid foundation upon which you can build a more effective online presence.

The SEO Learning Curve

Beginners will find SEO basics easy to learn—and often the basics are all you need. But like most endeavors, achieving mastery takes time. Studies show that to become an expert at almost anything, you need coaching and around ten years of dedicated practice.

As mentioned previously, if you’ve ever instructed swimming, then you know that after a young child has even a slight success in the water, their confidence quickly exceeds their skill level, posing a danger that is obvious to everyone except the swimmer.

Like swimming, the SEO learning curve follows a predictable pattern where confidence is at its highest while competence is still very low. As you gain more experience, you start to understand the complexities and nuances involved—what appeared to be straightforward reveals itself to be more complicated.

As the full depth of SEO becomes apparent, it can be overwhelming. This leads to a low point in confidence as you realize just how much there is to learn. But with continued study and hands-on practice, competence grows. You become skilled and knowledgeable, gaining a deeper understanding of online visibility. Your confidence increases once more, this time based on a realistic grasp of the field.

DIY SEO Resources

If you haven’t gathered by now, we offer SEO training and consulting. Our as-needed consultative approach is very effective and our DIY customers agree. We’ve worked one-on-one with hundreds of teams during the past decade from solopreneurs to national organizations. No matter your business’s size or stage, your online presence and digital marketing efforts will benefit from a second set of eyes.

If you’ve read everything above and still prefer to slog it out on your own, make sure your learning materials are up-to-date. SEO is a fast-paced field and resources quickly become outdated. We offer more information on how to learn SEO, but here are some quick tips:

Start by working your way through Google’s SEO Guide. Note, if you use a website builder such as Squarespace, most of the technical items are handled for you.
Moz’s learning center is a good starting reference.
Our small business marketing blog is geared towards beginners. Many of our resources are written so that when we introduce a concept to customers during a training, we can send further information if needed.

Final Thoughts

We 100% encourage a DIY SEO approach, just not 100% of the time.

Applying SEO principles to a website is certainly within reach for most website owners and in-house teams, but the nuanced insights of experienced professionals is the key to real progress. If you’ve just launched a website, a training session will set you on the proper path. Or if your site is struggling with an issue, getting expert help will quickly solve the problem and help you meet your goals.

Keep in mind, even larger companies falter with SEO. We’ve set Squarespace straight on numerous occasions—such as when they had hreflang errors on their global sites or when they released a botched robots.txt feature to users. The point is that every business benefits from expert guidance at times.

Seek out a good coach. Targeted training improves performance in any skill, and businesses will boost digital performance with professional SEO advice. Whether you’re a web designer learning the basics or a business aiming to compete at the highest levels, personalized, hands-on guidance is needed every now and then.

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