Saturday, December 27, 2008

SEO: Mysterious And Elusive

By Julie Johnson

The term SEO, or search engine optimization, is still an unknown to virtually everyone who doesn't work in that field. Most people have never even heard of the term nor know what it refers to. But the more interesting part is that even within the SEO industry, not everyone agrees on how best to approach the problems SEO sets out to solve.

There are of course the basic guidelines: lots of content on site, properly formed meta tags, get inbound links, give outbound links appropriately, and strong site organization. But the reason SEO continues to be more of an art than a scientific method is because there is no one way to accomplish these things. Exactly how much content does a site need, and how many times does a keyword need to be on a page? How many inbound links do I need and how do I get them? Are paid links ok? Are comment links ok? What makes a good title tag? A good h1 tag? Am I doing anything else wrong that will hurt my rankings?

Most professional SEO organizations will have a significant amount of overlap in their site analyses. And luckily, most of their advice to clients will not conflict. But still, if you asked 10 different SEO agents to perform a bona fide site analyis, you'd likely get 10 different reports. That's just the nature of the beast. The beauty is that most all good SEO providers will provide a level of depth and attention to detail in their reports similar to that which others provide.

This makes the industry exciting for the SEO organizations. It makes performing SEO well a challenge, not just a standard checklist that you can use. No magical software to plug the site into and get all the right answers. Every site is different. Every day at work is different. And not to mention the suspense of not knowing immediately if it is working. An SEO provider gets no grade except improved rankings and traffic for the client, which take time to build and fluctuate daily.

The mystery of SEO also makes it hard on a layman though. It is nearly impossible to perform truly stellar SEO work to your own site, because the finesse it requires only comes with volumes of clients under your belt. Further it makes it harder for a layman to choose an SEO provider, and to know if the changes his SEO wants him to do are right answers. It requires a leap of faith and at least a basic understanding of SEO to dive into it.

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