What does an SEO do?

simple question, what does an SEO do?

Do they advise you of what to do or do they actually do it for you?

Just wondering because if they actually do it for you wouldn't they need to have a working knowledge of every single script and wysiwyg editor that is out there?

and they would need access to your files so they would need to know their way around all the different control panels available.

what would you expect from an SEO?

thanks in adv....
James.

 

In my dealings, an SEO provides advise - you'd then get your web guys to implement the advice.

I'm sure a lot would offer to-do both, but as you've said sometimes this wouldn't be possible (if you've got lots of custom/complex for example).

 

It varies from company to company but for example we offer 3 levels of service

Report - This is the basic service, a written report with recommendations of things to do, also further suggestions and in some cases a follow up review.

Implementation - Either working with existing web development company or directly working on the site they implement whatever they discussed in the report.

Consultancy - This is a long term support and guidance role, more for larger companies that can afford to phone up when a problem occurs etc.

Hope that helps

 

What SEO Do?? hummm..... advice.

Today, when seo is known term among webmasters, they themselves have a little idea of seo.

If you go for a survey on this, then you'll find a mix answer. Originally, seo used to give advice only and charge for their consultancy.

But there are thousands of webmaster you want to give the task of following seos advice back to seo. So, in general, seos used to hire a team of web designers, few programmers and few more staff in seo team including link builders.

Hence, the seen is .... 80% seos are actually doing seo and sure you need to give each and every details of your site including business logic, script code, ftp password, cpanel access and what not.

If you are worrying about giving such details to seo then you can hire seo for advice only. OR hire reputed seo, well known good job history, nice feedbacks.

Good Luck.

 

There are these SEO’s who will do both for your website like how the big companies have them employed permanently to work on the daily progress of their website to be in the stiff competition in the web world.
There are also who will advise you like said but won’t do anything physically as they need to have access to the files.

 

all about seo:

SEO : [search engine submission]
seo is something, that helps a search engines by making your site easily navigable and indexable for search engines.

but then, seo also has two parts, the black hats, that dose some stupid works, trying to manupulate the page ranks, try to give too much importance on meta tags, and keywords stuffings etc.

let's talk about the good seo, it is all about helping the search engines.
1) making your site seo friendly,
2) robots.txt
3) sitemap
4) keyword popularity
5) good meta tags
6) fresh content
7) link exchange with similar sites(to be done very carefully, don't end up at some link farms, and that would be the end of everything,).
8) buy links
9) quality content, targetting your websites.
10) easily navigable sites.
11) article submission(add your site's link in articles and submit it to high pr article submission websites.)
12 directory submission. (not the link farms, high pr ones)
now, it is impossible to explain each and every point, but still we will try to deal with each, and see if it is possible.

sitemap, for this, i suggest you try the sitemap forum. google sitemap gererators are many, i like the xml-sitemap.com but then it has limitations. try the gsitecrawler, that's a better one.

keyword, for this, try the seoelite software, it helps sometimes.

fresh content, update your site with fresh content. add as much content as you can. that's the way it is. hire someone, buy content, content is makes your site hit.

talking about seo persons, a profession for the seo, will do all this work. even we do seo work, charge $20 for doing seo for one site. but there is absolutely no garentee, after all search engines decide, they make the rules, so we can only try! cheers!

 

What does a good SEO do?

Well in my opinion, a "Great" SEO goes beyond giving you a high ranking in Google.

A great SEO will have an in-depth knowledge of SEO from a technical perspective, a linking perspective, copywriting (and writing great content), an on-page optimisation perspective, as well as how internet marketing works.

Then they take all of this, and focus on creating the best possible return on investment for you, focussing on natural search.
(For example - if they see something on your web-site which could be adversely affecting your conversions - while it's not strictly an SEO issue a great SEO will advise you on it - because they know that it will affect the effectiveness of the SEO work provided.)

As for implementation / what to expect...

When I'm doing an SEO review, I'll generally hand my recommendations on site-changes to our development team to implement. However if the client already has a (competent) web developer on his/her team, then I'll give their web developer a list of recommendations to implement.
I'll then work on the other aspects of the SEO (link building if necessary, content building if necessary, etc etc).

Uttoransen has a pretty comprehensive list of what you'll normally get from most SEO's.



If you're looking for more info in hiring an SEO company, check out Stunt Dubl's article: http://www.stuntdubl.com/2005/10/03/hiring-seo-company/
It's from late 2005, but the fundamentals of what he's saying still apply today.

 

I believe they advice more than anything else.

 

WHAT? You dont need to submit a site to Search Engines!

Those four points you make are, in your own words uttoransen, trying to manipulate the page ranks...stupid black hat work.

Solicitors I highly advise to take everyone's response with a pinch of salt, especially those trying to sell you SEO services for $20.

The best answer anyone can get is from Google:

What's an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly?

 

Yea, 20$ SEO - nonsense.

 

One primary job for an SEO is to present and sell the benefits of search engine optimization over paid placement, email marketing, and affiliate marketing backed by quantitative numbers. Inform the client on how search engines naturally rank websites based on quality content with proper titles, meta description tags, website hierarchy, and accessibility. Also, the client is informed of how the SERPs will improve through off-site link building through areas of article submissions, blog entries, social networking site entries, press releases, widget syndication, and directory submissions.

Clients want to see the SEOs they hire engage in best practices outlined by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Large corporate clients are starting to see the importance of SEO working alongside paid search for an improved ROI/ROAS (return on advertising spend); and the SEOs who manage to sell the service properly will continue make a lot of money.

Feel free to contact me if you need to sell a catered package to your client, boss or department on the importance of SEO. Effective SEO is not cheap.

 

I don't see any of those as being black hat. If you have a business you have every right to advertise it in directories, write articles about it and even exchange a few links with your competition And if you decide to pay for a nice banner advert somewhere then technically you are buying links....all above board to me.

black hat would be the naughty stuff like pointing domains, hidden text and pages ranking for one, showing another, that kinda crap.

I am fully aware of what SEO is and rank well for everything I have actually tried to rank well for. I am just thinking about making some money out of it now but the last thing I need is to tell someone they need to (for example) use a mod rewrite for their urls, and not be able to implement it.

Do all SEOs know how to do mod rewrites? I am just trying to establish if there is a market for TELLING someone what to do...but not actually doing it myself.

James.

 

SEO can be advisory or implementational. If they find out that you have low density keywords, they will suggest that you get someone to write it up. They can help you to find links etc.

Its rare they may have access to your files etc. Developers usually do that though an SEO expert may want to fix your robots.txt fie etc.

 

Giving advice. Everything beyond that is a work of webmaster.

 

SEO give their opinion on that site and give suggestion on how to improve the site to be search engine friendly. SEO need to have working knowledge to be able to give suggestion and do their suggestion for the success of the site.

 

defining SEO in your on words are easy to understand, for me SEO is all about marketing your sites, making it visible to the browser so that visitors can visit the site. The only question is how to make it possible?

CARS * AUTOMOBILES

 

an SEO's basic aim is to optimize a website on particular and relevant keywords through the use of white hat techniques... []

 

Neither do I James. I was just pointing out that he/she claimed trying to manipulate page rank was black hat even though the tips provided do manipulate page rank.

Sure Google even advise to submit to relevant business directories.

I believe that all SEO people should know mod-rewrite, after all they need to be able to solve URL canonicalization problems.

SEO goes way beyond the scope of tweaking pages, building links etc. There are also server side steps that need to be taken as well.

 

Is there actually somewhere you can LEARN mod rewrite?

...is there a book called .htaccess for dummies

(or a good website resource perhaps)
James.

 

Give this one a shot - http://www.modrewrite.com/

Or you could always wing it and post questions on forums when needed. Although, I do advise in having some knowledge of mod-rewrite.

Oh and dont forget to read up on doing redirects on Windows.