If you’re like many website owners, you’ve probably done a lot of research on search engine optimization on your own and have a good understanding of how it works and how best to execute a ranking plan. You may know enough about SEO that you don’t need to hire a company to handle everything for you. But, you are probably too busy to handle all the necessary tasks that need to be done for your website to rank well in search.

For guys and gals like you, the best thing to do is buy individual SEO services or pre-made SEO packages. This way you can get exactly what you know you need to rank for, but let other people do all the work so you can focus on maintaining your website and overall marketing strategy.

When it comes to purchasing individual SEO services, as opposed to a fully vetted and managed solution from an agency, there are two ways to go about it:

Packaged SEO Services

Packaged SEO services are a great way to get everything you need for one price. Packages typically include onsite and offsite optimization and can be purchased one month at a time. On-site services may include a full SEO audit of your current website, optimization of your meta information and viewable content, and adjustments to your website architecture to increase load time and efficient search spider access . You can handle site changes based on SEO audit recommendations, or you can choose to give the service provider admin-level access to your site to make changes.

Offsite optimization will include a combination of services to gain relevant backlinks to your property website from across the web. Such properties could be blogs, web directories, article directories, and social networking sites. To be most effective, these services may take a few weeks to a few months to roll out, even if you only purchased the service for one month. Any company worth investing in will offer full reports on any off-site link building they do for you, so you can be sure the links have value and don’t associate your website with a “bad neighborhood.”

A la carte SEO services

A la carte SEO services work like a restaurant menu, giving you individual services to choose from. This is great for the do-it-yourself SEO who knows exactly what their immediate ranking needs are. Basically, a la carte services allow you to put together your own successful SEO packages or implement specific services one at a time.

Some of the services you may find offered by an a la carte SEO solution are:

Content Writing – Content, both on and off the site, is key to any successful SEO campaign, but producing quality content takes a lot of time.

directory submission – Web directories are a great way to get valuable one-way links to your site. There are thousands of web directories on the web, and submitting to even a fraction of them can be time consuming.

link bait – Link baiting is a great way to build completely organic backlinks, by creating unique content that is so engaging that people will want to share it by posting it on their own websites and social media.

social bookmarking – Social bookmarking is a great way to get backlinks and exposure to hundreds or thousands of potential visitors. As with directory submissions, there are tons of social bookmarking sites on the net and submitting to all of them can be time consuming.

These are just a few of the services you can purchase a la carte or packaged for your SEO needs. Before buying any SEO service, make sure you do a little research on the company you are buying from. Only buy from companies that have good reviews on the web and offer full reports on the work they do.