Should I learn SEO or outsource?

[minion]

I'm a full-time web developer but I quite often start up my own personal projects. I tend to try to build links to these myself by writing content and submitting to directories.

I've been thinking about it alot today - I spend a lot of time on these articles and link building campaigns, probably more than I should. That's time I could be earning money doing what I am good at.
I've considered outsourcing link building on here, but I'm never 100% sure if it's worth the money.

So my question is: Should I continue trying to learn how to do it myself, or just outsource the work?

[dadamson]

It really depends on your overall internet marketing goals and what you want to achieve.

SEO is a very time consuming and experimental task if you are thinking of doing it yourself.

In most cases, if SEO is not your primary business focus you may wish to outsource it so that you can focus on profiting from your business rather than getting hung up and obsessed over rankings.

SEO can also be very daunting task, if you are only doing a bit of article writing here and there and testing different link building activities then you may as well target low competition only, a dedicated SEO team has done the groundwork and they may have access to high quality private networks which will push up your rankings.

[minion]

Thanks - I think that's pretty much what I needed to hear. I spend so much time obsessing over rankings, links and experiments, and lose sight of what I'm actually supposed to be doing. I've always been interested in it, but think I should probably wait until I have something solid behind me before I start experimenting again.

Love the logo, grabbed my attention right away. Looking into your WSO now

[BloggingPro]

For the most part, you should at least learn some "basics" before outsourcing your SEO. Why? So you don't get sold insanely ****ty links for a lot of money. That said, outsource it. If your looking for someone on this very forum look no farther than Matt LaClear. He was offering a $99 get ranked for any keyword promotion, but I think that has since ended.

Regardless using one of his many services can get you some serious results.

[officer_iron]

You really have to take a look at your business and your desires. If you honestly think that you would be making more money if you outsourced it, do it. I personally like to learn everything I can. I work on a lot of different ideas, and it really helps to know about all the different aspects of IM.

[robjones3030]

On the one hand it isn't brain surgery, but it is time consuming, especially when you factor in the time spent staying current on the most effective tactics so you don't waste time doing stuff that ceased to matter with the last change of an algorithm.

Doing it yourself retains control, and that can be good, but if it's stealing time that could be better spent concentrating on your strong point there's an argument to be made for outsourcing the task to someone that does only that.

That said... I saw a link building campaign in progress where an obvious paid poster (I'm pretty sure a guy in PK didn't really own a site for a spa in Houston) was working his way toward getting a sig link in a forum I moderate. The posts he was doing that effort with were in the political section of the forum... Where he was displaying violent opposition to capitalism, the US, Americans in general, and talking about binLaden and Saddam being his heroes.

Regardless of your own political leanings on any of those topics... You must admit none of those views are something you'd want your clients to see when googling your company name if you owned a brick and mortar biz in Houston Tx. The owner had a computer guru in charge of the website, and the computer guru had sub-contracted work to some We-link-cheap crew in Pakistan that was out there building back links that the owner wasn't going to like should they come to his attention.

A related problem can occur when the task is outsourced to some guy with a copy of xrumer. It doesn't take long for a hardcore spammer to make the very mention of your URL a bannable offense on major forums and blogs.

You could literally be charged for hurting your chances of getting back links from those sources... EVER. Ask any forum moderator what he thinks of UGG BOOTS and you'll see an example of spam destroying a rep

So basically yes... There's an argument for relinquishing the marketing function to someone else... But choose wisely and keep a close eye on what they do. Good marketing guys can be invaluable, and bad ones can be expensive in more ways than one. This is not a function to delegate solely on the basis of cheapest bidder.

[minion]

That's a lot of stuff I never thought to consider I've experimented a little, and know I'd rather use a reliable service - but didn't stop to think about how much damage bad links could actually do. I think I have a good understanding of the basics, and I've been researching and experimenting on and off for about 8 months now but it's just so time consuming and I don't have enough experience or knowledge to know if what I'm doing will actually deliver the results I want - and I tend to get distracted by my next great development project.

Thanks to everyone for their help - I definitely think outsourcing is the way to go. I'm going to start promoting my core business - not something I want to mess around experimenting with

[TrustedCopy]

It's difficult to outsource it though if you don't understand it. A lot of services out there that just flat out don't work.

[Link Money]

In my opinion you should do both, learn SEO , and outsource. It is just the natural progression and over time your site will become noticed.
There are several warriors here that offer backlink deals. I would start smell and do a few that would seem natural.
I personally stay away from the profile link offers as I have never seen any7 benefit from them and have tried many. Some people swear by them, but not me.
Go with some realistic comment links on do follow blogs. Directory links in your niche are good. Try to get some edu and gov links in your broad niche.
For me the best type are Guest Posting on other blogs in your niche.

[minion]

I think even if I outsource, I'll still attempt to manually create backlinks - just not obsessively.

Just thought of another question though:
What's the best way to find blogs related to a particular niche that I can comment on? Are there tools that can help with this? (Not comment spamming tools, but commentable-blog searching)

[bermuda]

SEO will definitely take some time before solid net ranks and enhanced traffic shares are gained over the net and as you can guess, weeks and months of patienece would be needed which can be interperted as times when no big money would be made online. If you are a full-time developer and are happy with your earnings and job, the suggested idea would be getting in touch with the firms and SEO experts to do the jobs for you as they know what to do mostly.

Although links and contents are playing key roles in today's SEO world, but it is not that easy to enter all niches, especially the competitive ones and then assuming that by gathering some links, everything will be done. Web optimization can sometimes turn out to be too complicated to approach, especially in some hot niches which have been already targeted by very big sites, powered by thousands of links. You can begin searching for top service providers and discuss the projects.

[jackwebson]

Originally Posted by TrustedCopy

It's difficult to outsource it though if you don't understand it. A lot of services out there that just flat out don't work.

I agree with this one. I think you need to learn SEO first before outsourcing it. This is to prevent from other service who might take advantage of your little knowledge on SEO and might give you crap service. Just a piece of advice though.

[WakondaMarketing]

It depends. If you have several projects in tow, you can learn SEO on your own BUT if you have a network of websites and projects, it is advisable that you outsource.

[Rukshan]

You should learn SEO before outsourcing. First you need to understand basic parameters of SEO and offsite factors. Outsourcing depend on time

[Fernando Veloso]

You need to know before you can outsource - otherwise you're wasting time and money. Not saying you need to be an expert, but definitely learn the in's and out's of actual SEO before going outsourcing anything.

[Jack Samurai]

Learn SEO basics first. You are a web developer so you can easily learn about keywords, meta title, meta keywords, meta description, h1 to h2, alt tags. And then after try to outsource for link building.

[golf69]

You will be spending so much time on seo that your business could suffer...I know because I went through this myself a while back. Just my 2 cents.