Many business owners will try to cut corners and save money when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO) but as many have discovered from bitter experience, this is not always the best idea. DIY SEO has not always had the desired effect.

Although it may seems that you are saving money, the truth of the matter is that unless you are an SEO expert you may actually end up doing more harm than good. The search engines, Google in particular, are extremely sensitive when it comes to white hat and black hat SEO techniques and one slight mistake may cause your site to be permanently blacklisted!

Clearly, this is to be avoided and would cause a huge inconvenience not to mention the expense and time involved with creating a new website and the priceless damage caused to your brand.

It is often the case that when a site is removed from the search engines or loses its position, that the cause was purely an innocent mistake caused by lack of knowledge. Typically, the costs involved to rectify their mistakes far exceeds the initial cost of expert search engine optimisation.

If you are tempted to 'have a go' yourself, here are a few questions you should address before attempting to optimise your site:

- How accurate will your keyword research be without access to a professional tool set?

- How would you identify the most profitable keywords for your site?

- Do you know if the keywords you are targeting are actually searched for?

- How long would it take you to find relevant directories to submit your site too?

- How long would it take you to manually submit your website to those directories?

- Do you know where to establish relevant in-bound links to your site?

- Would you know where to look to find specific statistics in order to perform competitor analysis?

- Do you have the knowledge or tools to enable you to optimise your site and have you taken into consideration the fees for all of these?

You need to weigh up how long it will take to realistically research what you need to do and implement this compared to what you could be spending that time doing elsewhere to make you money concentrating on your area of expertise.

Search engine marketing is a profession and it can take many years to develop the necessary skills to understand fully what is required. If you wouldn't consider running your own traditional marketing campaign, why leave your search marketing to chance?

Derek Rogers represents Impact Media Ltd, a leading UK search engine optimisation company based in Hampshire, who believe DIY is best left for the home!