Can I Do Local SEO Myself, or Do I Need to Hire Someone?
Short answer: you can do some of it yourself. Long answer: it depends on what "it" is.
Between us at Got Juice, we've got over 20 years of combined experience working on local SEO for businesses in a variety of different industries and fields. And in that time, we've noticed two very different camps of business owners walk through the door.
Some are convinced they've already nailed their SEO. Others are convinced they don't need to focus on it. What's interesting is that both groups are usually wrong for the same reason.
The "we've already done our SEO" trap
Take the first camp. A business owner tells us they rank well on Google - sometimes even "position one", and they're proud of it, understandably. But when we dig into the data, we usually find the same thing: they're ranking for their own brand name. Someone searches "[Your brand name] +[your location]" and you’re there - first result. Great. Except that's not really SEO working for you; that's just Google matching a name to a business. Anyone typing your brand name into Google already knows you exist.
The real test of local SEO isn't "do we rank for our own name?" It's "do we rank when someone searches for what we do, in the area we do it" - think "reformer pilates studio Leeds" or "lip filler London." That's where the actual growth lives, and it's also where most DIY efforts quietly stall without anyone noticing, because the brand-term rankings mask the problem.
And the second camp - the ones who think they don't need to focus on SEO at all are usually working off the same flawed evidence. If your business shows up fine whenever you or your customers search for it by name, it's easy to assume you're covered. But that tells you nothing about whether you show up for the searches from people who've never heard of you yet, which is really the whole point. Most people when looking for something in their local area rely on Google Search and Maps - that’s where your local SEO comes into play for new business growth.
So before you decide whether to DIY or hire, the first job is figuring out which camp you're actually in - and neither "we've got this" nor "we don't need this" should be assumed without checking.
What you genuinely can do yourself
We're not going to tell you that local SEO is some mystical dark art only agencies can touch. It isn't. There's a solid chunk of it that you as a business owner can absolutely take on, especially with a bit of direction:
Writing your own blog content - if you're given the topic and target keywords, you're often the best person to write it. You know your customers, your tone, and your industry better than anyone.
Writing copy for your core pages - same principle. Nobody understands your service better than you do.
Optimising your Google Business Profile - keeping it updated, adding photos, posting updates, choosing accurate categories.
Getting more reviews - this is genuinely one of the highest-leverage things a business owner can do themselves, and it costs nothing but a bit of consistency.
If you're a smaller business, maybe you've just launched a website, or you've been trading a while and things have been ticking along fine, these are excellent places to start, and you don't need anyone's permission or budget to begin today
Where it tends to fall over
The trouble starts with the parts that aren't visible on the surface - the stuff that determines whether all that good content and those five-star reviews actually get seen.
Keyword strategy. Knowing which keywords are worth targeting - the ones with real search volume and realistic competition for your area isn't guesswork, and getting it wrong means writing great content that nobody searches for.
Technical SEO, like schema markup, site structure, and the behind-the-scenes signals that tell Google what your business actually is and where it operates.
Backlinks and citations - and specifically, good ones. There's a lot of noise out there about "just get listed everywhere," but low-quality or inconsistent citations can do more harm than good.
SEO-proofing your writing. Even if you write the blog yourself, there's a craft to structuring it so it actually performs - heading hierarchy, internal linking, on-page optimisation. A well-written blog and an SEO-optimised blog aren't automatically the same thing.
Our honest take: it's not all-or-nothing
We don't think local SEO is a strict "hire an expert or don't bother" situation. DIY is genuinely fine, especially in the early stages, and for the tasks listed above, we'd actively encourage you to have a go.
But here's the thing we'd say plainly, because it matters: the technical foundation needs to be right from the start. It is so much easier and cheaper to build a site with the correct schema, structure, and technical setup from day one than it is to go back and unpick years of workarounds later. We see this constantly: businesses that DIY'd the visible stuff well, but built on shaky technical foundations, end up needing far more remedial work down the line than if they'd got expert eyes on the foundations early.
So our advice isn't "don't touch it yourself." It's: write your own content, own your Google Business Profile, chase your reviews - but get someone who knows what they're doing to check your technical foundations before you build too much on top of them.
So, which one are you?
If you've recently launched a website, or you've been trading a while and things have been steady but you've noticed a plateau — or worse, you're watching competitors pull ahead in the same searches — that's usually the moment to stop and take stock. It might mean you need a full hand-over. More often, it means a quick audit to find out which bits are working, which are brand-term illusions, and which foundations need shoring up before you keep pouring effort into content on top of them.
If that sounds like where you are, we'd be happy to take a look and tell you honestly what we find - including if the answer is "you're doing fine, keep going." Request a free consultation today and we’ll do a mini local SEO audit for you.
By Victoria Taylor, Marketing Director at Got Juice Marketing