Should I do my own local SEO, or pay someone?
Quick answer: You can do every single thing I do, for free, and some of you absolutely should. A Google Business Profile costs nothing. Claiming your Bing and Apple Maps listings costs nothing. Asking for reviews costs nothing. There’s no secret and no gate. What it costs is about 15 hours to set up properly and 3 or 4 hours a month forever after, and knowing which of the 40 things to actually bother with.
So it comes down to whether those hours are your cheapest hours.
What you’d actually be taking on
Let me lay it out rather than being vague about it, because vagueness is how most agencies sell.
The setup, roughly 15 hours. Claim and verify your Google Business Profile. Pick the right primary category, which matters more than almost anything else and which most people get wrong. Fill in every service, every attribute, proper opening hours including bank holidays. Write descriptions that read like a human. Upload 20 or so decent photos, geotagged. Claim Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Then find every directory that has your old address on it and fix them one by one, which is the bit that takes the longest and is the most tedious work in the world. Add schema to your website. Write an llms.txt so some of the AI tools can read your prices.
Then, every month, 3 to 4 hours. A post a week on your Google profile. Reply to every review, good and bad, within a day or two. Check nothing has changed or expired anywhere. Write something for your website, because that’s what feeds Google and the AI tools. Take some new photos.
None of it is hard. All of it is fiddly, and it’s the sort of job that gets left behind when you’re actually busy, which is precisely when you can least afford to drop it.
When you should just do it yourself
I mean this when you say ‘Should I do my own local SEO?’ Do it yourself if:
You’ve got time in the week and you don’t mind admin. Some people find this stuff quite satisfying (that’s me!), and if that’s you, crack on.
Your business is doing fine on word of mouth and you’re not chasing growth. Honestly, if the diary is full, leave it alone.
You’re a one-person outfit where the margins are tight and £99 a month is a real number. In that case start with my free check, do the fixes yourself off the back of it, and pay me nothing.
You’re techy. If schema markup doesn’t scare you, you’ll get 80% of the way there in a weekend.
When you probably shouldn’t
Your time is worth more than £25 an hour. That’s about the crossover. If you’re a plumber turning down work to sit and update directories, you’re losing money to save money.
You’ve tried and stalled. This happens constantly. Somebody claims the profile, posts twice in March, and then the thing sits there going stale for 8 months. A half-done profile is worse than an honest empty one because Google reads the neglect.
You don’t know what to prioritise. There are about 40 things you could do and maybe 6 that make a difference for your trade in your town. Guessing wrong isn’t free, it just costs you time instead of money.
You need a website too… Doing your own local SEO on a slow, badly structured site is polishing a car with a flat tyre – sorry.
Side by side
| Doing it yourself | Hiring me | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0 | £599 setup, then £29 or £99/mo |
| Your time, setup | About 15 hours | About 1 hour, answering my questions |
| Your time, monthly | 3 to 4 hours | Near enough none |
| Knowing what matters | You learn as you go | I’ve done it before |
| Consistency | Depends on how busy you are | It happens whether you’re busy or not |
| Someone to ask | Google’s help docs and YouTube | Me, on the phone |
| Website | Yours to sort | I’ll build it from £399 |
| Risk | Time spent on the wrong things | Money spent, and I might not suit you |
The middle option nobody mentions
You don’t have to pick. Get the free check, which tells you exactly what’s broken and in what order. Fix the easy things yourself. Then either leave it there, or put it on Watch for £29 a month so my system tells you when something drifts and I can nudge you.
That’s a real option and plenty of people use it. It costs less than a phone contract and it stops the slow rot, which is what actually kills a local business’s visibility. Nobody wakes up and decides to stop maintaining their Google profile – It just stops happening.
“I’ve talked people out of hiring me more times than I’ve talked people into it. If you’ve got the time and the inclination, do it yourself, and I’ll tell you where to start for free. I’d rather you got found than got invoiced.” – Becky Halls
Fair questions to ask
Is local SEO actually free? The doing of it, yes, entirely. Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, review requests, all free. What costs is the hours and knowing where to point them.
How long before it works? About 3 months to start showing, whoever does it. Anyone promising faster is either guessing or fibbing, and that applies to me as much as anyone.
Can I start myself and hire you later? Yes, and it makes my job easier. Every directory you’ve already fixed is one I don’t have to.
Will you tell me honestly if I don’t need you? That’s what the free check is for. Sometimes the answer is “your profile is fine, go and ask 10 customers for reviews.” I’ve sent that email plenty of times.
What’s the single thing to do first if I’m doing it myself? Your primary category on your Google Business Profile. Get that wrong and everything else is wasted effort. It’s a 2 minute job and it moves more than anything else on the list.
Where I’d start
Take the free check. It’s 2 minutes to request, it costs nothing, and it’ll tell you what state you’re in. Then decide whether the fixing is your job or mine.
Either way you’ll know more than you did this morning.
Becky Halls. Websites, Google profiles and AI visibility for local businesses across Nottinghamshire & Lincolnshire. beckyhalls.com
