Choose Your SEO Expert Carefully

If you’re going to buy something expensive, don’t you want a little proof that it’s gonna work?  Don’t you also want some reassurance that they know what they’re talking about?  With all the SEO experts popping up, you really need to do double duty in choosing your SEO “expert” carefully.

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the art and science of optimizing elements of your website so that your website will rank higher in search engines like Google.

It seems that many a web designer has realized that offering SEO and Internet marketing advice and services will somehow benefit their clients.  So they find some old articles on the subject, and type out a pretty, well formatted article, and declare that they are experts in the matter.

Even in my own town of Grand Junction, Colorado I’ve recently seen a swarm of web designers that are entering the field of SEO.

Here’s the problem….

They have no proof that they can accomplish what they are talking about. I ran Google searches on a variety of related topics that they should be ranking on, but they are no where to be found.

They don’t really know how it all works, so they write up a few articles on information that they found, and call themselves experts.

But the information given in some of these articles is old (sometimes defunct and even dangerous) and not keeping up with the ever changing algorithms and structure of search engines and how they operate.

Google and the other search engines realize that they are being gamed, and that the game is changing.  Since they own the game, they get to set the rules and change them when they want.  Typically we notice major changes on a quarterly basis, and minor changes continuously.

Learning SEO (and maintaining your skills) is a nearly daily learning activity. It’s a fast paced activity, and can’t be done by reading a few well crafted articles. There are myriad resources of SEO books and videos to buy ( and some for free) that need to be read/watched and then analyzed and absorbed. It’s not unlike going to school where you read from books, do research, and then submit a final project. It takes time and energy.

Think about this, Twitter is now streamed directly into the search engines for results. Social media friends within your own social media circles  was introduced recently.  These are things that we’re possible 6 months ago.  They are new, as the game changes.  This means that you now have to optimize your site to compete with Twitter, FB and all the other social media circles.

Ideally, a web designer should either partner up with and SEO company, or hire someone in-house that only does SEO and Internet marketing.  SEO is a full-time responsiblity.  There is no way that a web designer can be an expert artist, and keep up with the changing rules for SEO.  There’s just not enough hours in a day.

I don’t actually optimize this blog anymore, but I bet if you Google Grand Junction Marketing I’m still on page one!

As the old Latin phrase goes “Caveot Emptor” – Buyer Beware!

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