I've been doing this SEO thing for a long time. My thoughts and ideas about SEO have changed a lot over time. After attending SES NYC a couple months ago, and in the context of working on lots of different SEO projects, I have come to a conclusion... There's no such thing as advanced SEO.
Last summer, I even authored and delivered an "Advanced SEO" class. Hummpphh. No such thing.
Three years ago, I'd have made a big deal about SEO and how experts were hard to come by. How complex it is and how it would take a deep understanding of how robots work and all kinds of technical issues: canonical perfection, site theme or silos, funneling page rank, server configuration, directory structures, keyword density analysis and on and on and on.
Alright - before you get all nuts, I get it - these things are important. But it's a matter of degree and resource. What I find in 99% of cases, these things don't matter so much and so don't warrant any resources (time or money).
Here's what I mean: Let's say you're a small accounting firm. You have 3 accountants you work with and bill $700,000.00 per year. You have a 12 page Web site that contains all the standard "here's who we are and here's what we do" information on it. They are static html pages. In this case, none of the advanced mumbo-jumbo (that I spent years learning) applies at all. None of it. Sure, they should log into their hosting account and make sure that http://somedomain.com is 301'd to http://www.somedomain.com. Even that canonical resolution is usually done automatically by most hosts. What else is there?
Nothing advanced, that's for sure.
I've consulted with literally thousands of businesses all over the country. The vast majority of them fit the description above - not accountants, but have simple, brochure Web sites and need no big changes in order to rank just fine.
So if not advanced, what should people do?
Well, let me put it like this: If you were thinking about dropping a few thousand bucks on SEMPO training, Bruce Clay training or the like, save your cash. Here's what you should do...
- Identify a good set of targeted keywords. Download Market Samurai for free and use it to find high traffic, low competition keywords - say 3 to 10 keyphrases.
- For each keyword, craft a new Web page inserting the keyword in each on-page element: title, meta description, meta keyword, header, first sentence of body copy.
- Add 200-300 words of body copy making sure to use various permutations of your target phrase.
- Submit your site manually to Google, Yahoo! and MSN along with an XML sitemap.
- Start backlinking - forums, blogs, social bookmarks, articles, directories, chambers, business partners - wherever you can find them.
Um, that's it. How is that advanced? It's not. You're welcome, I just saved you the $3500 you were going to spend on advanced training.
The real problem is that most businesses just don't have the necessary time to put into SEO, or managing their pay-per-click campaigns, for that matter. It is not that SEO is so hard, it's just that it takes time.
I went to every session I could get into at Search Engine Strategies. Some were billed as more advanced than others. Sure I learned a couple of new resources or little tricks. But nothing new. When I cut through all the fluff, I realized that underneath was something very simple: Get some content on a page and link to it. Done.
It is not advanced to set up user profiles on relevant blogs and forums and use them to get backlinks.
It is not advanced to get social bookmarks.
It is not advanced to write ezine articles and get them posted.
It is not advanced to create and launch SEO press releases.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am...with few exceptions, most SEO is simple, straight-forward and easy to implement, albeit time consuming.
Maybe an argument could be made that knowing where to go to get backlinks is where the expertness comes into play? I suppose so. But a single afternoon on SEOMoz or SearchEngineWatch.com will teach you all that.
Yep, I'm an expert SEO. But I'm thinking that doesn't mean as much as it used to, or even should. I'm convinced: There's no such thing as advanced SEO.
