In my ten years as an Online Marketing Consultant, SEO software adviser has been a major part of my duties. Over the years I thought I had seen it all but I’m happy to say I was wrong. And if you need to optimize your site, you might just be happy too.
Let’s start with what we know. If you have ever tried to optimize your own website, chances are you either bought a big thick SEO book, tried expensive SEO software, or both. It’s normal. I think pretty much every cost conscious entrepreneur with even a hint of the do-it-yourselfer has tackled this at one time or another.
There was just one small problem however. Well, actually two… First of all, even the most straightforward SEO book takes a huge investment in time. Maybe not the actual reading, but the comprehension of a new and complex topic. And second, even the best, most foolproof SEO software is only as good as it’s user’s SEO knowledge foundation. What do I mean by that?
Think of a great piece of SEO software as a professional race car. It’s expensive and it’s fast but in a race, it’s only as good as it’s driver allows it to be.
It might sound like having the best car is all you need but can you imagine driving 210 mph with 42 other drivers doing the same while also bumping into you, cutting you off, and crashing all around you – each desperate to win?
It sounds like having some knowledge of high speed driving and experience in racing would be a big help.
It’s like that in SEO, with the risk of injury or worse being to your bottom line profits. And it’s not just 42 drivers competing against you. It’s thousands of optimizers – each trying to be number one for your keyword.
You can spend $500 on an amazing piece of software but if you do not have a certain level of expertise and knowledge, that’s most likely going to be a lot of time and money wasted. Here is just one painful example.
Warning: The following story might make you cringe.
In September of 2009 one of my new clients came to me after spending $600 on SEO software, another $150 on “must have” upgrades, and a whole month learning the software while he optimized his site. He finally landed at number 9 and was thrilled until he learned that exactly 27 people in the entire world of Google’s vast search network had searched for his keyword the month prior. Had he selected the top ranked keyword, his target audience would have averaged 235,000 searches per month. And that’s just one kind of obvious consideration. In SEO there are dozens most people would never dream of.
So where does that leave you? You can keep plugging away or hire an SEO Expert for anywhere from $100 to $250 an hour. If you are in the money printing business you can probably afford that, but for the rest of us, options are few. Or so I thought until I came across an SEO micro-consultancy.
In a micro-consultancy arrangement, SEO experts offer targeted SEO packages that are custom made for do-it-yourselfers. In short, they go through your site, find the best possible optimization entry points (areas where the least work is needed) and then do a detailed analysis of your site fully explaining what the exact secret formula is to optimize it.
I discovered this through one of my associates who found such a company, called DotCom Pirates – http://www.dotcompirates.com and tried their services. For less than the cost of her latest SEO book purchase she got a 150 point detailed analysis of what was wrong with the site and more importantly, how to fix it – all in plain English. Better still, when she tested the support (looking for the flaw that she thought had to be there) she got genuine support from a real person who does SEO for a living.
I will continue to research and test SEO software but now I will certainly be keeping an eye on, what I hope is, a growing trend where experts are highly specialized yet affordable and approachable.