SEO is about more than meta tags, title tags, and targeted anchor text. Call it "competitive webmastering", "SEO", or any one of a slew of other titles - it is the thought process of lateral thinking and understanding of website creation and marketing combined that matters most. It is a line of thinking that necessitates doing what is optimal: when to balance user experience with "bot experience" to create a site that will harvest any legitimate traffic without detriment to conversions, or without venturing into areas beyond the given risk threshhold for the project.
There’s probably a lot of better more cool names I could label myself - but I will forever consider “being an SEO” an honor, despite the beating it often takes from those that sully it’s good name. Below are the principles and qualities I would consider for qualification as a “good SEO”. I’m sure there are plenty that I missed - and hopefully there will be some debate of what can be added or removed, but these are the areas I personally feel are unique to “being an SEO” - and common traits and ideals that I see in those that I would consider top SEO’s. Why do you need a flashy title if you can sum up what you do in a three letter acroynym?
Search engine optimization is no longer a process - it is a business school of thought - a philosophy. SEO is a thought process of using specific search marketing tools and principles for creating a successful business. SEO is making specific business decisions based on previous knowledge that will ultimately impact bottom line profitability.
Why are you always retrofitting and re-optimizing? Your CEO (or other decision maker) didn’t ask the right questions. You need to know how to build and promote a website from the ground up to be successful. Picture your perfect web presence. Visualize web 2.0 Zen. Now work backwards and apply these principles to your website among various time, budget, legacy technology, and personal ego obstacles of varying degrees in the way of your quest towards website enlightement. Welcome to the world of SEO.
I rarely do promotional posts unless I really believe in a product, and the person behind it. Andy has beat me to providing a linkbaiting service that I think will hold an enormous amount of value for subscribers. The service consists of writing an article that has a very high likelihood of going viral, and giving it the gentle nudge it needs for success in the social network arenas. Mr. Hagans has explained his service to me, and it is a great mix between public relations, viral marketing, and search optimization. All totaled - it looks like a pretty awesome service - and I’m sure if it wasn’t, Andy wouldn’t put his name on it. I don’t think he’s officially launched yet (though he gave me the okay to post this), so get in before the demand and price rises.
There are several quick easy ways to establish some trust for your domain. There are really no excuses to not have most of this stuff for any legitimate business website. It’s so easy and the opportunity cost is extremely low compared to the potential benefits. Read: Yes, this is speculative - but it’s also relatively easy, shouldn’t take you long, and MOST LIKELY will combine for better results. You can probably argue each one of these - but why bother when you could be out working on more sites to test it on?
A good SEO is both a geek and a suit, and is able to speak the language of both worlds. Providing SEO services without understanding both business and techie principles is the equivalent of trying to teach english to spanish children without knowing both languages and cultural mores of both fluently.
