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Assuming one wants to launch a website with good reviews from beta-testers-users, is it worth spending money on Search Engine Optimization consulting/specialists or does a hacker with good IT skills and time to read articles/posts on the net can produce the same value by himself?

Has anyone experience to share? Is the return worth the investment?

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Just a note, anything you do with SEO in the future should be heavily tracked and tied into a measurable ROI, otherwise there is another black box inside your business that you won't be able to measure it's value. =) – Kort Pleco Oct 2 '11 at 16:01

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If you were talking about something that would be a one-off task (like setting up a company) I would recommend paying a professional. But if a function or task is going to be an ongoing part of your company, it is best to learn those skills yourself or bring in someone with those skills.

From what you have said, I'm guessing that SEO is going to continue to be important to you, and so I would strongly recommend learning about it yourself. It's not actually that hard, and in many ways SEO is still a bit of a black art. We don't know (although we would love to) exactly how Google's algorithm works, but they do give hints at what is important from time to time.

That way you not only save on the cost of a consultant, but you also gain a new and valuable skill that will help you make better decisions in the future.

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Thanks for your feedback, my feeling was the same as yours, so it is a kind of confirmation. I think hiring SEO/Marketing specialist would only make sense if we were to go for a large national or international campaign, but that is not the case. I'll stick with my guts feeling: learn it by ourselves... – JVerstry Oct 2 '11 at 15:12
up vote 2 down vote

As John mentioned, there are two ways to think about SEO. The first is a one-time investment during a site redesign, to make sure your site is structured based on SEO best practices. But this only gets you a small part of the way there if you really want your content to rank well.

SEO should be a factor in every piece of content that goes up on your site, like blog posts or landing pages. This means mainly three things:

  • Use language in your copy that's consistent with the keywords you're trying to rank for
  • Include lots of internal linking between sections and pages on your site
  • Consider all of the places you could get inbound links to your content from other sites

SEO is surprisingly simple, but it must be considered whenever you add any new content to your site in order for you to get the most value from it.

I'm not sure that having an outside SEO consultant would really help much with these day-to-day SEO considerations.

By the way, if you decide you'd like to have some outside help, HubSpot put together a great guide on how to spot a bad SEO consultant that you might find useful:

http://www.hubspot.com/how-to-spot-bad-SEO-services/

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up vote 0 down vote

Launching a web site is not a simple thing.

Really you want see your site top position in the SERP, Search Engine Result Page. You need to consider many things.For this you must consult a Search Engine Optimizing Consultant. Only experts can do all those things. Hackers cannot do this. If any thing go wrong or if it is unnatural Search Engines may consider it as a spam or unethical. It will impact on your SERP position negatively.

A top position website can give more visitors which in turn will increase your business.

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