SEO And Web Design - When Should You Go It Alone And When Should You Get Help?

When you create a website that you’re proud of, it can often end up feeling almost like ‘your baby’. You’ll have poured hours of work into its creation, and in many ways it will reflect your personality. You’ll feel almost protective of it and want to protect it, and that’s a great way to feel. Only sometimes this can actually be a negative thing. Sometimes being too ‘close’ to your project can end up clouding your judgement on important issues, and sometimes it can end up actually damaging your progress. 

One way this can happen is if you find yourself insisting on handling every part of your site on your own. Some web designers and webmasters will end up wanting to handle everything from the HTML, to the design, to the content, to the SEO. 

Problem is, few of us will be equally talented in all of these disparate areas and as such we can end up doing a sloppy job. If your skills are in HTML and SEO, then why would you inflict your design skills on your site and create the background image yourself? 

Even if you do an adequate job, a professional designer from Fiverr could probably do a better job and end up bringing far more visitors to your site. 

So when is it time to step back and trust someone else to work on your baby? Read on to find out…

When You Know It Could be Better

In the example of the wallpaper, you will probably know on some level that a designer would do a better job. Even if you’re good at something, you shouldn’t settle for that level and should instead persist until you get great. If you aren’t able to objectively judge your own work, then just ask a third party what they think.

Here’s a tip though: you should still create your own design too. This way you can show it to the professional designer, compare it with what they create and most importantly – gradually learn to do the work better yourself so that one day you can legitimately do it yourself.

When it Will Take a Long Time

Some jobs require a little expertise and creativity to begin with, but then subsequently involve lots of repetition and work to do the same task. An example is SEO. While your overall SEO strategy takes a lot of expert knowledge, the actual act of writing articles and sending them to guest bloggers etc. is really just repetitive. In such cases your expertise could probably be put to better use, so this is a perfect example of when to outsource a job to a company or service.

When You Need to Know the Details

Some jobs are a little too sensitive and personal to outsource. Coding can sometimes be this way if you have written a long code with little by way of annotations. To pass this on to someone who doesn’t know the ins-and-outs of your site, or the precise effect your aiming to achieve, could end up making matters worse and proving a mistake. When the data is personal, complex or sensitive, then you’re best off going it alone. Other times? When you love something, you have to let it go…

About the Author:  Mike is a consultant at Wisdek, a company that specializes in internet marketing. He likes talking about SEO strategies and helps many web designers achieve their goal. During his holidays, he likes spending time with family and friends.