Trust Your Mechanic

Last week, my car broke down spectacularly. My engine coolant sprang a leak and my radiator boiled over as I was attempting to drive up Pottery Road, perhaps the steepest hill in Toronto.

Not knowing the first thing about auto repair (I did not excel in any class with “shop” in its name), I got the engine cooled off and then hauled ass to my trusty mechanic who promptly informed me that a $2 clamp had fallen off the coolant line & it would cost $85 to get it (as well as a couple of other minor things) repaired.

This is the point in every conversation a mechanic has with a client when the client runs through a quick mental pro/con list. My thoughts went along these lines: “I can save myself $83 by just buying the part, taking it home, figuring out where the part goes (there’s got to be a website that’ll tell me how), figure out how to elevate the car to get under the engine if required (turns out it was required), put the part in place and top up the coolant (maybe another $5 or so).”  Of course, by the time I’ve figured out how to get the bill down to under $10, I’ve also come to the humbling realization that I don’t know what I’m doing and I’d probably end up doing more harm than good. So I deferred to his better judgment, and within an hour or so I was driving home in a car that didn’t threaten to die at every turn.

I may not know a lot about cars, but I do know a fair bit about how the internet works, and whenever I talk to prospective clients about search engine optimization I can see them running the pro/con list in their heads. Most of the tools involved in SEO are relatively inexpensive, so clients often wonder why they can’t just “pop the hood” on their website and optimize it with a DIY mentality.

Here’s the typical SEO-con arguments …

• It costs money: a talented SEO rarely works pro-bono these days. If you cut out the “middle-man” you won’t have to cut him a cheque (or, in the USA, a check).
• The information is widely available: nothing is stopping you from buying a book and teaching yourself all about SEO, or maybe trusting some of the opinions offered on the internet.

Of course, you’ve got to consider the pros as well …

• It doesn’t cost that much money, all things considered: there is a price tag attached, but you have to consider there’s also a substantial return on the investment you’re making. If spending a few dollars on your site’s optimization brings in thousands of new customers who never would’ve found you without it, then I’d say it’s worth it.
• There’s a lot of trial and error involved:  even an experienced SEO might have to take a couple of kicks at the can to start getting solid results. Paying for the SEO’s experience and proven intuition can help you get better results quicker.
• This could take a while: a well organized and executed SEO campaign is not an overnight process. Gone are the days where you stuffed your homepage with the keywords you wanted to get returns on and the traffic just poured in. Just about everyone has an SEO strategy in the works, and that most likely includes most of the sites you’re competing against. Today, SEO is a combination of onsite and offsite optimization that requires a lot of fine tuning in order to get it just right.
• You most likely have something better to do: don’t we all?

This last reason is always the clincher. Sure, I could’ve put a lot of blood, sweating and tears (and a liberal amount of swearing into figuring out what was wrong with my car, but I likely would’ve burned more than $85 worth of my time in the process, and my business likely would’ve suffered as a result. That’s why I try to discourage the do-it-yourselfers from getting involved in SEO. Sure, I have a vested interest in persuading them to me, but I’m also looking out for their best interests. We’ve all got something better to do with our time, and your business has a better chance of prospering on the web if you don’t spend all your time worrying about search engines.