Why Hiring An SEO Company Was My Worst Decision As A Business Owner.

It's said that social is sexy, but SEO pays the bills. As a small business owner who juggles countless plates (metaphorically, I'm not a magician), that was music to my ears.

I followed up a recommendation for a leading SEO agency and eagerly signed up with them. Whilst I wasn’t expecting magic (I fully understood then, as I do now that with SEO you play the long game), I also didn’t anticipate that six months later I would pull the plug.

Why did I do this? Well because I realised that the success of a small business lies with the leader. And that was me.

SEO isn’t just ‘search engine optimisiation’. It stands for so much more. It tells you what your competitors are writing about and your audience is consuming.

You’re forced to dig deep and get a grasp on your keywords, balancing phrases that work for Google with those that bring your brand essence to life.

It can be the life blood of your business. If I was paying someone to do this for me, I was missing a trick. It should have been me, and not them who got this information and could nimbly react to it.

By taking on my company’s SEO, I got to know my business so much better. And you know what, once I started to see results, I actually began to enjoy it.

While I’m in no way saying that my SEO know-how compares to an agency that does this day in, day out (although I have been impressed with what I’ve managed to learn ‘on the job’), I think that passion and the ‘sensor’ that small business owners have for their company outweighs this.

Let's look at what I learnt along the way.

SEO helped me truly understand my business. This is a big statement but it's true. Why was I paying someone else to find out what people were searching for in my industry, when I truly needed to learn this myself?

Taking on the SEO work gave me the dedication to sit and work through this. And this insight is now at the very centre of my company, helping me to innovate and stay ahead of the curve.

Keywords are gold. These little phrases enable potential customers to find you. And it should be YOU who's getting under the skin of the keywords, not an agency. You need to learn what your audience is searching for (in my case, how we can help our older parents stay independent), and work out how to reach them. Yes, it takes time. Yes, it requires dedication and a lot of time sat in front of a screen thinking up search terms. But it will pay off.

I've spent the same amount of time working on SEO as I did working with my agency, and I feel my knowledge and confidence have come on leaps and bounds. Which can only benefit my company.

SEO is actually pretty fun. It's basically investigative work, looking at what is trending in your niche and how you can hijack it. When you get a win and realise that people are finding you as a result, it makes the hours of screen time pay off.

This isn't an SEO company bashing by any stretch. The company I worked with were good, I know there's heaps of great ones out there, and I hope in the future to need to use one again. But what this has taught me is that as a small business owner, the business lives and dies with you. You need to have the most insight into it. And taking on the SEO means you quickly do this.

It made me realise that SEO is so much more than just paying the bills – it’s the reason that your business is flourishing and the bills are there in the first place.