The Seven Secret Skills Of SEO Work

There is a lot of talk on the web regarding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how, if you just do this one thing, you will be at the top of Google. If only it were that easy!

In fact, I believe there are seven distinct skills that a search engine optimiser needs to possess. Most people possess one or maybe two of these skills, very rarely do people

posses all seven. In truth, to get to all seven, people who are good at two of these need to actively develop the other skills. This takes time and effort and, if you are

running your own business, do you really have the time to do this?

The seven skills that I believe are necessary for SEO work are:

HTML coding - developing Search Engine friendly coding that sits behind the web design

An eye for detail - even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.

Patience - there is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.

IT skills - an appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms they use actually work

The reason for this is that before you get people to your site you need to get the spiderbots to like your site.

Spiderbots are pieces of software used by the search engine companies to crawl the Internet looking at all the websites, and then having reviewed the sites, they use

complex algorithms to rank the sites. Some of the complex techniques used by web designers cannot be trawled by

spiderbots. They come to your site, look at the HTML code and exit stage right, without even bothering to rank your site. So, you will not be found on any meaningful search.

I am amazed how many times I look at websites and I immediately know they are a waste of money. The trouble is that both the web designers and the company that paid the money really do not want to know this. In fact, I have

stopped playing the messenger of bad news (too many shootings!); I now work round the problem.

This is no place for even the most enthusiastic amateur. Results need to be constantly monitored, pieces of code

added or removed, and a check kept on what the competition are doing. Many people who design their own website feel they will get searched because it looks good, and totally miss out this step. Without a strong technical understanding of how spiderbots work, you will always struggle to get your company on the first results page in Google. We actually run seven test domains which are testing different theories with different search engines. Remember that different search engines use different

criteria and algorithms to rank your site - one size does not fit all.

The next skill is an eye for detail. Even a simple change to a web page can create an error that means the spiderbots

will not crawl your site. Recently, I put a link to a page that didn't have www. at the front of the address. The link still worked but the spiders stopped crawling, and it took my partner to find the error. We have recently invested in a

very sophisticated html validator that picks up errors that other validators just fail to see. These errors do not stop

the pages displaying correctly to the human eye, but cause massive problems with spiderbots. Almost all the code

that I look at on the web using this validator flags major errors, even from SEO companies.

The sixth skill is patience, or is it a virtue! Some people seem to want to make daily changes and then think they

can track the web page ranking results the next day. Unfortunately, it can take a week for absolutely correct changes to take effect, in which time you have made six

other changes. Add to this Google's

reticence to allow new sites straight on to its listings by adding a waiting factor of, maybe, three months for new sites, and you have a totally uncontrollable situation. We say to all our clients that a piece of SEO work should be

looked at like a marketing campaign that runs for six months, since it is only after that time that a true

judgement of the effectiveness of the work can be made.

The final and seventh skill is an appreciation of how search engines and algorithms work, for this where both IT and

maths experience is useful. People who have programmed at a detailed systems level have a natural feeling for how

spiderbots will read a page, what they will search for, what tables they will set up, what weightings they may give to

different elements. All of this builds a picture of the database that will be created and how it will be accessed when a search is undertaken. Unfortunately, this skill is the most difficult one to learn as it relies on many years

experience of systems programming.

So, in summary, I would say "If it was easy everyone would be doing it!". I hope you will see that professional Search Engine Optimisation companies need more than a bit of web design to improve your business. Make sure anyone

you choose for SEO work can cover all the bases.

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