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Do you prefer to do your own SEO or do you hire someone to do it?

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Some webmasters are skilled at doing their own SEO and can grow their online community through SEO, while other forum owners choose to outsource it and hire someone to handle it for them.

 

So, are you a community owner who can do their own SEO, or do you prefer to hire someone to do it for you? If you're the type to do your own SEO, how long have you been doing it?

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    I admit that sometimes I'm lazy. If I'm in a good mood then I'll do my best to get everything as optimized as I can. And I have to admit that often I use ChatGPT do to that too. It seems to have a better understanding which phrasing to use than I do.
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    my board has a 100% SEO score on both mobile and desktop

    Same here, only that you helped out on that :P

     

    And yeah, I've done some SEO work myself but for my forum had only done it recently so it may take a wee while for guest activity to increase substantially, and also for the likes of Googlebot to crawl the forum again.

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    Same here, only that you helped out on that

    And if it weren't for you using PageSpeed Insights, to begin with, I wouldn't have the 100% SEO score using that tool because my board had similar SEO issues that yours did.

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    Same here, only that you helped out on that :P

     

    And yeah, I've done some SEO work myself but for my forum had only done it recently so it may take a wee while for guest activity to increase substantially, and also for the likes of Googlebot to crawl the forum again.

     

    Are you using google search console to track your clicks and search traffic?

     

    What are you using to track your daily traffic? Google analytics or another data service?

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    Are you using google search console to track your clicks and search traffic?

     

    What are you using to track your daily traffic? Google analytics or another data service?

    I use neither. I just cross my fingers to see if anybody turns up via the Online List...

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    Google Search Console is pretty easy to use. You have to insert your board URL and a meta tag into the <head> section of your board wrapper and you can get live search updates that way. I use it myself.
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    I use neither. I just cross my fingers to see if anybody turns up via the Online List...

    If you’re actively promoting and working on SEO, you’ll have to track where your traffic is coming from somehow, so I’d recommend implementing those scripts.

    They’ll help you out a lot!

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    If you’re actively promoting and working on SEO, you’ll have to track where your traffic is coming from somehow, so I’d recommend implementing those scripts.

    They’ll help you out a lot!

    I'm hopeless at coding, but I did have someone who helped create a "tracker" page for my forums before (which came in the form of a plain text document showing the IP address of the guest plus the source they originated from (like from a Google search or clicking on the link on my sig).

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    • 4 months later...
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    For me I would hire someone because I know nothing about SEO and the backends of forums. I'm good at the front-end stuff like posting and creating rapport. But the SEO I am useless lol for those reasons I would hire someone to do it.
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    I think with resources like ChatGPT, doing your own SEO work is more doable now than ever before. I would find value in learning the skill as a fresh community starting out likely wouldn’t have the resources necessary to hire someone for this purpose.
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    I think with resources like ChatGPT, doing your own SEO work is more doable now than ever before. I would find value in learning the skill as a fresh community starting out likely wouldn’t have the resources necessary to hire someone for this purpose.

    I’d still fine tune the results that Chatgpt gives you with SEMrush, wordstream or Arehfs to see how much those keywords are receiving in monthly traffic as well.

     

    The free tools that SEMrush and tips can help a lot.

     

    For me I would hire someone because I know nothing about SEO and the backends of forums. I'm good at the front-end stuff like posting and creating rapport. But the SEO I am useless lol for those reasons I would hire someone to do it.

    There’s a good resource site with LearningSEO if you’d like to learn one day! https://learningseo.io/

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    I’d still fine tune the results that Chatgpt gives you with SEMrush, wordstream or Arehfs to see how much those keywords are receiving in monthly traffic as well.

     

    The free tools that SEMrush and tips can help a lot.

     

     

    There’s a good resource site with LearningSEO if you’d like to learn one day! https://learningseo.io/

    Absolutely, AI is only as good as the human reviewing it. It’s a great jumpstart tool though to help get you moving forward.

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    The things I have learned and performed on my own for SEO, well, I have found many ways to reduce my exposure lol. So no more tweaking by me lol.
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    The things I have learned and performed on my own for SEO, well, I have found many ways to reduce my exposure lol. So no more tweaking by me lol.

    What have you done? When you see a page drop in traffic and visibility, then it’s a good idea to revert back to your previous version after a couple of days, then try a different version.

     

    Sometimes a keyword declines and you’ll need to tweak it to a newer one to boast the the traffic or sprinkle in the newer keywords into the pages, especially if you see some keywords showing up in your queries section of Google search console.

     

    Even interlinking some older content to newer pages can boast your rankings.

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    Well my site is too new to come up with those metrics. In my post I was referencing a, well, experimental period where I thought I could tweak it up a bit. In my efforts I lost many listings due to duplicate content as well as poor meta keywords and a few other great ideas I had.

     

    Right now I have reasonable success getting most all my pages properly indexed. Mainly because I haven't been dinking around where I am not as skilled.

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    I’d still fine tune the results that Chatgpt gives you with SEMrush, wordstream or Arehfs to see how much those keywords are receiving in monthly traffic as well.

     

    The free tools that SEMrush and tips can help a lot.

     

     

    There’s a good resource site with LearningSEO if you’d like to learn one day! https://learningseo.io/

    Thank you for that! I will definitely take a look into it. Thanks again for sharing

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    I prefer to do it on my own. Well, I am certainly not an expert but I have been doing SEO for over 10 years and I have managed to get some good results. I think it is better to spend money to learn SEO instead of hiring someone do to SEO. Hiring someone to do SEO is not a viable method if you plan on running your website for a long time and want to see sustainable growth.
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    I prefer doing SEO on my own. It's useful to have a background in SEO if you manage sites, and I'm not shy to ask [mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] for pointers ;)
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    • 2 weeks later...
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    I prefer to do it on my own. Well, I am certainly not an expert but I have been doing SEO for over 10 years and I have managed to get some good results. I think it is better to spend money to learn SEO instead of hiring someone do to SEO. Hiring someone to do SEO is not a viable method if you plan on running your website for a long time and want to see sustainable growth.

     

    Honestly, I wouldn’t bother paying someone to do SEO. Most of the time, it’s a waste of money. I’ve seen so many people over the years throw thousands at SEO audits, and in the end, those audits didn’t actually help them get anywhere.

     

    The best way to handle SEO is to just do it yourself. You’ll learn by experimenting, seeing what works, and figuring out what doesn’t. That hands-on experience is worth way more than any report someone else hands you — plus, the skills you build now will keep paying off long-term.

     

    Edited by Cpvr

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    If you have access to paid SEO tools, you can get better results of your SEO effort compared to hiring someone to do SEO. SEO starts with writing a good content, so you need to improve your writing skills. If you have average writing skills, maybe you should consider hiring writers who can write SEO content.
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    • 3 weeks later...
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    If you have access to paid SEO tools, you can get better results of your SEO effort compared to hiring someone to do SEO. SEO starts with writing a good content, so you need to improve your writing skills. If you have average writing skills, maybe you should consider hiring writers who can write SEO content.

    I agree. Writing good content that prioritizes humans first while also being optimized for search engines is challenging, especially without prior experience.

     

     

     

    Creating SEO-friendly content requires keyword research and competitive analysis to determine the best keywords to rank for in a specific niche. That’s why i think many people choose to outsource their content to experienced writers who specialize in SEO.

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    I do my own SEO. I typically install plugins on my forums using SMF, but I use meta tags for my other forums. I keep an eye on things via google search console and I even get emails sent to me when my rank goes up on my websites!
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