Esther C Kane

Many companies today are looking for ways to save money and since I’m in the SEO businesses, I see and hear business owners talking about trying to do the SEO for their websites themselves.  I’ve even heard a few tell me that “a friend” is going to help them.

Well, all I can say is, the business must not be worth very much if they give SEO such a low rating.  But, then I got to thinking, maybe they don’t know it’s worth.  I mean, all my existing clients that have said this to me are either brand new or they haven’t participated in the SEO marketing.  You know what I mean, there are business owners out there who purchase SEO but don’t participate in SEO.  And truth be told, any internet marketing campaign will fail if the business does not take part in the campaign.

Anyway, I’m getting off the subject.  I wanted to talk about the act of SEO.  I wanted to go through what is REALLY involved in conducting SEO, on a regular basis.  I think that if anyone thinking they can do SEO themselves or that just “a friend” can help them, then they just need to look over this list.  If, after looking it over, they still think they have the time, tools and inclination to do the work, then that’s great.  But, better to make a decision with all the facts!

So, what’s really involved in the act of SEO?

1) You need to know html or php or asp, whatever code your website is written in.  Why?  Because you’ll be creating new pages, changing content, altering layouts.  If you don’t know what you’re doing with the coding, then you’ll likely mess it up and spend 3 days trying to figure out why you can’t center that paragraph that you want to center!

2) You also need to know website coding because search engines, nowadays, are very aware of poorly coded websites.  Poor coding will make your website look sloppy and amateur. You’ll lose rankings and customers.

3) The minimum amount of time you need to spend on your website weekly is…

a) 15 minutes to review your website statistics.  You need to check for downtime, broken links, unusual traffic, keywords and bounce rates.

b) If you find any problems on the website after reviewing your stats then you need to give yourself time to fix it.  This can take anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes.

c) 60 minutes to review competitors’ backlinks and submit your site to some of those backlinks.

d) 30 minutes to answer email concerning link exchanges and to add the exchanges to your website.

e) 60 minutes to review keyword competition on the Internet – you want to review what your competition is doing as far as the amount and type of traffic they’re getting and then try to implement some of their techniques on your site (if applicable).

f) 15 minutes to run a ranking report (sometimes it takes longer, it depends on how many keyword phrases and the speed of your Internet connection) and review the placement of the keyword phrases.  Basically, you want to see where your website sites on the search engines for the keyword phrases that you’re marketing.

g) 45 minutes for keyword research to identify trends and niches in your industry that your website is currently not marketing.  This is one of the very best ways to attract new customers and to grow your website.  It’s time consuming, but absolutely worth the time.

h) 60 minutes to write at least 1 article on your blog and to post on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  Keeping up with social media is extremely important in today’s Internet marketing strategy.

i) 30-60 minutes to read the latest news related to SEO and Internet marketing.  There literally isn’t one day that goes by that some new information, software, tool, etc. isn’t introduced that can impact how your campaign is run and/or how your website is affected.  It’s important to keep up with the search engine news AND updates on web design and SEO tools.

j) 30-45 minutes to submit your website to at least 4 or 5 directories.  That entails not only finding the directories but also filling out the forms and then responding to the emails to confirm the submission process.

Well, that’s pretty much it.  About 6-7 hours per week, per domain.  Seems like alot?  If you haven’t yet begun the process of “doing it yourself” – all I can say is, just wait!  Along with doing the work, you also have to set up a system for yourself.  In other words, how will you keep track of what directories you submitted your site to?  What link exchanges you requested?  Notes on what your competition is doing?  Etc.

If you do take on SEO, it can be challenging but rewarding.  But if you think it’s just an hour here and there and you’ll get the same results as you do from a professional SEO webmaster, well, you may be in for a bit of a surprise.