What if your website ranking on page two (or three) in Google isn’t just costing you visibility – it’s bleeding thousands in lost revenue every month?
While 40% of small and midsize business CEOs still view search engine optimization (SEO) like it’s some kind of digital voodoo, there’s a stark reality they’re missing: the main difference between do-it-yourself (DIY) SEO and professionally done-for-you SEO often comes down to the difference between surviving and thriving online.
Before you decide whether to tackle this beast yourself or call in the cavalry, let’s cut through the noise and get real about what’s actually at stake for your business.
Why some choose DIY SEO (and others don’t)
Why are business owners so skeptical of SEO? For good reason, if you consider:
- Past experiences with questionable SEO providers who promised quick results but didn’t deliver.
- The delayed nature of SEO results (taking months to see any significant impact) versus getting immediate results from paid advertising.
- The sometimes-opaque nature of SEO work and difficulty in directly attributing revenue to SEO efforts.
- Frequent changes in Google’s algorithms that seem to undo previous SEO work.
- The relatively high cost of quality SEO services when compared to other marketing channels, which may provide more immediate and measurable returns.
In other words, doing good SEO is the long approach, and it can be fumbled in the hands of those who don’t know what they’re doing or can’t explain the value-add well enough to a team of eager entrepreneurs.
Looking around, there are a lot of other fast approaches that seem to be less confusing and quicker to show results. But how long do those results last?
A reticence towards SEO consulting has been apparent for some time in SEO. But, the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to change many perspectives, as businesses that had strong online presence and good SEO fared better during lockdowns. Now that up-and-coming companies are looking at SEO with new eyes let’s see what they see.
We’ll give you a hint: It all points to dollar signs.
Professional done-for-you SEO: it’s not an all-or-nothing approach
The first thing to consider when you’re a small to midsize business looking at website SEO is – what do we do best, and what should we hire out for? It’s not an unfamiliar line of thought, and probably one you use literally every day. The art of staying in the game and competing with the big guys is knowing where you deliver a unique value, leaning into that, and saving resources wisely on all the rest.
So, let’s apply that critical thinking to organic SEO. As CEO of a small to midsize business, which SEO tasks would you “do yourself,” and which would you want to have “done for you” by an SEO expert?
DIY SEO Tasks
From years of seeing similar situations firsthand, I’d have to say that if I ran my own SMB, these are the tasks I would do myself as CEO:
- Set the overall SEO strategy and goals. | As CEO, I would want to ensure SEO aligns with our business objectives and define what success looks like. This means determining target markets, key products/services to promote, and priority geographic regions.
- Review high-level SEO performance metrics. | I would want to personally monitor key metrics like organic traffic growth, conversion rates from organic search, and rankings for our most important keywords. This helps maintain strategic oversight without getting lost in technical details.
- Understand customer search intent. | By regularly reviewing search terms that bring people to our site, I could better understand customer needs and adjust our business strategy accordingly.
The CEO is the SMB’s ship captain. As such, you are primarily responsible for strategy and setting the course. However, it’s rare that you’re also needed equally below deck to calculate the exact amount of fuel needed or maintain the ship’s equipment. Those are jobs best left to the specialists. Or that intern you hired with a two-year background in digital marketing.
Done-For-You SEO Services
Drawing from my experiences delivering professional SEO services for small and midsize businesses, the tasks I would absolutely delegate to a real SEO expert via done-for-you SEO services include:
- Technical SEO implementation. | This includes site speed optimization, mobile responsiveness, XML sitemaps, robots.txt configuration, and fixing technical issues. These require specialized knowledge and consistent attention to detail.
- Keyword research and content optimization. | While I would want to review the strategy, I’d have experts handle the detailed keyword research, content gap analysis, and onpage optimization. This is time-intensive work requiring specific tools and expertise.
- Link building and outreach. | Building quality backlinks requires sustained effort and established relationships in the industry. A real SEO expert would likely have better connections and more efficient processes for this.
- Regular site audits and competitor analysis. | These detailed analyses require specialized tools and experience to interpret correctly.
Even after years, getting SEO right is still both an art and a science. You want a team of experienced professionals advising you, and that alone is worth the investment. You need people who not only know how to read the changes but have been in the game long enough to have seen it before.
You want the experienced SEO strategists that your interns would hope to ask when obscure SEO questions arise, Google changes its algorithms yet again, or you need to identify why one particular page is not converting as promised.
You can learn SEO through trial and error, but that learning curve comes at a cost — your time, resources, and missed opportunities.
Alternatively, partnering with seasoned SEO professionals means leveraging their expertise for faster results. While DIY offers control, done-for-you SEO provides proven systems and established expertise from day one.
SEO is not just about page rankings; it’s about getting a website that converts. And while page rankings are paramount, one does not necessarily mean the other.
You could have a page-one website that gets you great traffic and never any money. That makes the sting all the more painful, doesn’t it? All those users flowing by and never clicking, downloading, or reaching out. Yet you can’t figure out why.
Organic SEO for small business
As professional SEO experts, we can. That’s what we get paid for: SEO forensics. We find out what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and where a few adjustments could make all the difference. No one knows your organization like you do – but nobody knows small business SEO like us.
We show you how to monetize all those pretty pages and make them work for you, not just take up space on your server. And we help you apply that process across your entire site, force-multiplying the effect of each page as we go.
In other words, we don’t just rank websites — we build sustainable traffic that converts to revenue. When we start with a struggling client, we:
- Immediately address the bottom line.
- Shift the focus from vanity metrics to actual business impact.
- Emphasize sustainability vs. quick fixes that can actually harm their site.
- Provide full transparency about timelines and expectations.
At the end of the day, achieving great organic SEO for small businesses (and getting your site to reach its potential) is not about mysterious “SEO magic.” Rather, it is about a systematic approach to growing your online presence in a way that directly impacts your bottom line.
Done-for-you SEO services do that for you. Keep your eyes on the prize. Focus on what converts. And understand the technical SEO levers that get you there.
A ship’s captain is responsible for getting the vessel to port, and part of that means selecting the right crew — especially for something as revenue-critical as SEO.
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