When DIY SEO makes sense
- You serve one city or a small area
- Your site has fewer than 30 pages
- You can give it a few hours a week
- You can write about your own services
- You target many cities or services
- The site has indexing or migration problems
- You have no time to publish and track
- You compete in law, dental or home services
These are our rules of thumb, not fixed limits. Google's own guide on hiring an SEO says a small local business can probably handle much of the work.
A DIY plan that works
- Pick your most profitable service and build one strong page for it.
- Complete your Google Business Profile with categories, hours and photos.
- Ask every happy customer for a review, week after week.
- Link related pages to each other so buyers and Google find them.
- Check Search Console each month for clicks, queries and indexing errors.
Mistakes that cost DIY owners months
The usual traps are busy work and shortcuts. Thin blog posts and copied city pages waste time without bringing calls. Buying links breaks Google's spam policies and can lead to a manual action.
Watch out for vendors who promise a number one ranking. Google warns that nobody can guarantee it.
A middle path
Many owners split the work. You supply service details, photos and customer follow-up. A specialist handles site structure, technical fixes and content planning. You keep costs down and skip the expensive mistakes.
Start with how SEO works and how long SEO takes. Want a second pair of hands? Our SEO services can take the technical side while you keep the rest.