Why SEO is Easy When You Know How
A criticism levelled at SEO is that it is largely a simple activity that anybody can do. People don’t see the value in hiring a professional to do a job that can easily be done by any site owner. Of course, that isn’t entirely untrue.
Anybody can do SEO, I’ve certainly never knowingly suggested otherwise. Theoretically though most of us could, if we put our mind to it, play football, master nuclear physics or build a home from scratch. Unfortunately we wouldn’t be much good, certainly not at first.
Getting to grips with the basics might be easy. Learning to control a football, you might be able to work out what an atomic nuclei is and understand how to mix cement, but that won’t make an expert at any of these pursuits. The information to become an expert is out there, but you’re not going to learn it over night.
I’ve been doing SEO for many years now, too many to mention, so I’ve picked up my fair share of knowledge in that time. But it is a developmental process. You get the basics, refine that knowledge, test it, refine, test and repeat. I’m still learning now in fact, as the algorithms change, so too do the way in which we optimise.
The principles are laid in stone though. Build a good site, get the internal link structure up to scratch, write excellent content on each page and then attract those incoming links. There’s no secret ‘miracle formula’. Do each element well and you should succeed.
But like the aforementioned professions, SEO is only that easy when you really know how. You can read a decent SEO book and that’ll give you the building blocks to work with, but ultimately you have to experience it for yourself. Testing and research can take time. It also won’t guarantee great results.
Therefore if you own a small business with a failing website, it makes sense to contact a professional. You could try to do the work yourself, but the likelihood is that it wouldn’t be as thorough or effective as an actual SEO expert, plus you’d be distracted from your real duties – running that business.
Search Engine Optimisation won’t necessarily have an instant impact on your site’s traffic or rankings. In fact it could take months to see any major effects. But that’s why you need to start as soon as possible.
By tinkering with your own business site, there’s a reasonable risk that you might actually do more harm than good. Okay, there isn’t a lot that you can get wrong when it comes to writing good content, but what if you don’t understand that keyword stuffing can actually have a negative effect. These things that seem to make sense in principle (hidden links, white text and excessive footer links), often have an impact that is detrimental.
Knowing what works and what doesn’t comes with experience. Being able to implement changes that will make a positive difference in a site is in the realm of a professional. Being able to simply implement changes can be done by anybody. Will it make a difference? Well it might, but you’ll have to factor in testing and revision with work.
SEO isn’t impossible. There isn’t an elite of SEOers out there trying to keep the secret formula to themselves and making people pay through the teeth for their assistance. If you want to do SEO, then do it. Read the books, blogs and everything else that’s out there. All the information can be found easily enough, just as long as you have the time to go through it all of course.
