DIY SEO Or Hiring An SEO Service: The Pros & Cons Of Both

Deciding to take on the task of doing your own search engine optimization can be both a rewarding and challenging undertaking. The same can also be said for outsourcing your SEO to a professional agency that focuses on optimizing websites for businesses that are in your particular market or niche. Both sides of the fence have advantages and disadvantages that must be weighed to determine which option is right for you and the most efficient, cost effective, and profitable choice for your company.
The pros and cons for DIY and outsourced SEO are numerous and varied, but several key points for each one are detailed here to give you a better idea of what they may or may not require and how they may or may not be the best choice for you:

DIY SEO

Do-It-Yourself SEO Advantages

• Complete control over every aspect of SEO and content optimization
• Saves money by internalizing one aspect of business operations
• You alone are responsible for the success or failure of your SEO efforts
• By doing it yourself, you gain a greater understanding of the processes involved

Do-It-Yourself SEO Disadvantages

• Requires a substantial investment of time, taking staff away (or your time away) from their primary duties
• If you aren't highly skilled in SEO, you could end up causing more harm than good with your DIY SEO efforts
• You alone are responsible for the success or failure of your SEO efforts
• Without adequate skill and experience, you may end up incorporating Black Hat tactics into your own website's SEO, resulting in getting your site banned from rankings and search lists
• SEO processes take much longer than they should due to lack of experience
• Little skill or experience in content marketing writing
• Lack of knowledge with regard to search engine algorithms, constant fluctuations in the ranking process, and industry-specific forecasting and trends; puts you at a definite competitive disadvantage

SEO Services

Outsourced SEO Advantages

• Frees up a company's time, staff, and resources, allowing them to be put to more productive use
• A professional agency fully understands all aspects of SEO and how to maximize optimization on a local level (selective markets; niche-specific) and a global scale (mainstream internet visibility)
• A great deal of knowledge about search engine algorithms, fluctuations in ranking processes, and forecasting and trends; gives the client a competitive advantage
• SEO processes are completed in very short time-frames (compared to DIY)
• Full service management of website content and all aspects of site SEO
• Staff usually consists of expert content marketing writers

Outsourced SEO Disadvantages

• Depending on the vendor, outsourced SEO can be quite costly (but sometimes it does take a fortune to make a fortune)
• There are literally thousands of agencies to choose from, making it almost impossible to know if you're getting the "right" SEO firm for your needs
• Without thorough research, you may end up hiring the services of a Black Hat SEO, which could result in highly damaging consequences for your online content, reputation, visibility, and profitability

A competent and qualified SEO company will have a proven track record of success stories and an established reputation in the industry. Outsourcing your SEO services is not a cheap undertaking, but if it is done correctly your company will see the benefits through increased web traffic, higher ranking placement, and improved conversion rates. While you can do your own SEO and may even do well at it, you will likely never be as successful at it as an agency that specializes in website optimization and online marketing.

Social Media Micro-Film Wars: Instagram vs Vine

Just as you think you are keeping up with the social media trends and just as you get your workings in order everything changes again!

I don’t know if you have noticed but Twitter has had this thing called “Vine” for a while now where you can take short videos of up to 7 seconds and share them with your followers (I was just about to type friends) on Twitter as well as embedding them on other social media. Vine was initially on iOS but arrived on Android 4.0 and above on June 3 and wow did it take off! Being that the video can only be up to 7 seconds long means that you could only share a brief “moment” with your friends, just to say a little more than what a picture would.

Thing is though, this was only for Twitter, so Facebook was losing out, and fast! So Facebook who owned Instagram decided to get on the bandwagon and added video to their app a few days later, and well...that stole the market back, plus more! Instagram was out there before Vine, so all those Instagram users that used Vine because of Instagram’s lack of video was immediately ‘stolen’ back. So not only has Instagram’s popularity increased, but they have also pinched almost half of Vine’s users.

So where am I going with this? You remember I said that you could embed these videos just like what you would do with a YouTube video right? I believe that the popularity of these Micro-Film apps should be used by businesses and web designers to enhance the user experience and business exposure to customers. Businesses nowadays all have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, now it is time to expand into the Micro-Film network. Creative web designers can incorporate videos of your Instagram/Vine account onto your website to enhance the user experience. I can already see this being used in retail websites where the product as a brief 7-10 second advert just to show how the product looks, fits or works in real life. This would dramatically increase consumer confidence in the advertised product!

Which should you choose?

Ideally you should choose both! Reason for that is simple; you don’t want to alienate any of your users due to a lack of compatibility. However, looking at current statistics there is an overwhelming agreement that Instagram is clobbering Vine.

After conducting some research it was clear that Instagram is outgunning Vine, which would make sense that if you really felt compelled to go for just one, then you should choose Instagram as it is by far the most popular. However let’s not forget that little rise at the end of Vine’s trend-line; there is still a lot that could happen.

Next Steps?

I think we can all agree that the Micro-Film industry has a big future. We saw this with Twitter and Facebook when the two giants started battling for social network supremacy (and still are); we can only expect the same to happen with these two ‘newcomers’ even with Instagram’s big head start.
Web video production will be playing an ever greater role in how we approach web design. User experience with internet speeds are also getting faster and everyone having access to social media and websites via smartphones, tablets and computers. So it would only make sense that the website development industry ‘upgrades’ as well, or should I say ‘modernise!’