I've been reading everything I can about SEO for the past few years and all the advice and tips people have are the same old thing (get backlinks, social bookmarking, articles, directories, page optimization etc). My question is, what do SEO professionals and companies do that someone can't just look up on Google for themselves? I'm guessing some companies may have high PR sites that they can get you solid backlinks on. Even that can be accomplished by someone who just applies themselves. Are there any real SEO pros that can shed some light on this? I'm not looking for a how-to guide, I'm just wondering if there is more to SEO than what I can find on DP and Google.
SEO Professionals THINK with an educated and experienced mind..... I consider myself a professional SEO based on my industry experience and educated decision making.... SEO is mainly about making the right decision ahead of time, and making it work. SEO and being effective at it involves strategic decision making and knowing what is happening and what will happen with the industry in the future because an educated SEO knows where it has been. Good SEO is not about building more links than the next guy or doing better meta tags... It's about key decision making... Atleast, that's my 2 minuete opinion.
Excellent post! And in your case I have seen the results, you are one of the few I can highly recommend as an seo, and there are not many out there.
Awesome post. As an SEO professional my day is usually split between doing stuff now and doing stuff for the future. For example, link building, optimizing pages and meta data is now and forward is looking through the site to see what could be updated, keyword research, forming partnerships with other companies and organizations, etc
The best advice I can give you for SEO is dedication. Setup your strategies and do them over and over day after day. Learn more and add or remove strategies as needed. Repeat day after day and you will get the results you want
When your car doesn't start you go to a mechanic and he might spend half an hour fixing it and charge you $100. You are paying him for the knowledge that allows him to know whats wrong with the car rather than the small amount of time he took to fix it. Anybody can do the thing that we SEO consultants do, its just a question of knowing what to do in certain situations. Thats all down to experience. Also a lot of us know how to use social bookmarking sites to get thousands of links. Most clients have never even heard of these sites.
I guess the main thing you cant learn online, is real life experience. There are different methods of implementing organic SEO, which seem to work better for certain vertical markets. Forums like DP are an excellent place to learn and study.
Basic SEO principles remain same - only the methods of implementation vary. A good SEOer will keep abreast of the latest trends in the industry and advice client accordingly.
I am not an SEO expert but I am good at SEO. What separates the good SEO guys from someone that knows a lot but is not an expert Experience With a lot of different applications and situations. I would have been better off to pay a SEO expert a few years ago, than spend the time and wasted money learning on my own. Remember like there are good car mechanics and bad ones, same with SEO companies. For every horror story you hear about someone that waisted money on a SEO company their of a lot of silent people raking in the money that are glad they hired one! Good Luck
Ask them to explain everything they are going to do to market your site. If they try to blind you with jargon or employ dodgy tactics then stay away. If they mention submitting to a search engine or keywords in meta tags stay away.
The SEO that I chose to help me was sharp, creative, and explained to me his own "laboratory experiments" which allowed him to develop some proprietary techniques. I am sure each SEO professional has their own proprietary toolkit, and you should discuss them so that you feel you are getting good value for your dollars. I personally prefer techniques that have long-term value-add as opposed to short-term pops. Rich
professional seo people find out what is working and they do it at all costs. Find out what works and do a lot of it.(finding out is the trick.)
Build more links, group up with others, partner with others, profit-share, create communities and great user-generated content, automate as much as you can and possibly hire your own slaves (interns) in order to maximize your results. I'm about to place a training system in my new company's site for training interns in link building as well as everything else. I highly recommend you work with others.
oh i get this questions all the time about seo pro's, answer is that their to do the job for those that don't have the time to do it for themselves. Yes, its simple to look things up on google for the info you need but what if that person is running a company, trying to make payroll, just plain ol' running the business. Thats what good managers do, delegate the work needed to keep things moving. . . it looks like you do have the time to do seo on your own but if you want to grow as a company you gotta start spreading the responsibility around to reach that growth . .
You're right, you can google and buy ebooks which will tell you what most SEO's do and how to do it. But when your car brakes down, do you learn how to be a mechanic or do you pony up the expense take it to the garage which charges you through the roof? The people who attract wealth in life are those who specialize in something and become the best in it - they outsource the work they aren't so great to other people who are the best at what they do.
I agree with most of the people here. I personally think, the job of an SEO is more like a survey job, a proper survey of your website, your website keyword, going through every bit of your website and making sure it is perfect for any Search Engine.
SEO and internet marketing are morphing. A good SEO is going to brainstorm with a client and identify business objectives and goals; from there they are going to undertake seo and identify creative marketing concepts to achieve these goals. Following that they are going to continually monitor the results and identify which methods are bringing the right results, then split test and fine tune to provide their client the best ROI...a good seo proves their worth via the bottom line and is able to pitch to the client this principle.