Despite the fact that there are thousands of SEO copywriters, SEO agencies and other digital magicians in the world-wide marketplace, there must be many more thousands of non-SEO specialists wasting an awful lot of time, money and hope on their own versions of SEO.

The fact is, and it’s probably stating the obvious: there’s only a finite number of slots available on Google’s SERPs pages. In hoping and planning and scheming to reach a coveted Page One Google ranking, there will be lots of disappointed ‘losers’.

It’s easy to see why so much emotional and financial capital is invested in SEO, of course. The potential new business that follows from a high Google ranking is enormous. It’s a pity therefore that there are so many people who think they know all about SEO but in reality know very little. This isn’t helped by the fact that Google regularly moves the goalposts with algorithm changes like its Mayday and Panda Updates.

As with any other gold rush, people are leaving themselves wide open to unscrupulous operators. This will inevitably include some SEO professionals who are well placed to exploit what amounts to communal and monumental ignorance among the wider business community. It should be added, however, that the overwhelming majority would appear to play by the rules and seek only to better their reputation by achieving excellent results for clients using scientific and innovative ‘white hat’ techniques.

Nevertheless, a combination of greed and gullibility among the wider population has created a massive SEO industry that is probably second only to Social Media in its impact on online marketing. There are certain SEO ‘rules’ which Google outlines on its website, but these are generalities for the most part and common sense to anyone who’s spent any time at all looking at the criteria the search engine uses to rank web pages.

This has led an overwhelming number of people to handle their own SEO, partly because they feel there’s enough information out there and partly because they feel no outside SEO company could possibly have the same insight into their business – even if they could afford (or justify) their rates. As with so many other business services, however, employing professionals will ultimately reap dividends and should therefore be regarded as an investment.

There’s really no substitute for employing SEO specialists who focus 100 per cent on what they do, 365 days a year. They bring experience to the table gained from working with other clients. They’re abreast of the latest techniques and changes so they know what’s working (and what may be old hat – or positively damaging for your site’s rankings). And, dare it be said, they often bring a fresh and objective viewpoint which – as outsiders – may well enable them to step more easily into the shoes of their clients’ customers!

Appointing a junior member of staff to scratch around for half-an-hour every day and monitor SEO statistics is no way to approach this subject, even if you have other more rigorous measures in place that diligently tick-off all the boxes that supposedly lead to SEO nirvana. These include the usual suspects such as on-page SEO copywriting, link building and off-page content creation such as online PR, blog posts, article marketing and so on.

It’s unlikely either that many companies will have the in-house expertise in place to complement this level of SEO activity with coding experts who can do a ‘belt-and-braces’ job with things like anchor tags, internal linking and other feats of HTML applied in a regular and systematic way.

What all this boils down to is whether you’re happy to be a struggling amateur when it comes to SEO – or whether you’re prepared to bite the bullet and invest in a SEO professional (whether that’s a full-blown SEO and SEM agency, or perhaps a SEO copywriter). Given that SEO is constantly changing – and given that SEO is a long haul when it comes to ranking well for the more ‘generic’ keywords – this can only be money well spent.Submit article
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