SEO Overload – Why you Hire a Geek

If you are one of the millions of people who glaze over when words like ‘algorithm’, ‘statistics’ and ‘trend variations’ start being tossed around in conversation then there is nothing unusual about that. A lot of webmasters hate hearing those words because they imply that there is more to SEO than good luck and good timing. We hate to burst their bubble, but SEO isn’t a crap shoot or a gutsy gamble – it’s a science built on accumulated data and fairly predictable results. Choosing to ignore is what is a gamble.

You have to have content, which is creative, but you also have to have an idea of keyword density, rewrite rules, and other data driven numbers and percentages. Adding in those scientific factors doesn’t take away from the amount of creativity you can enjoy. If anything, it takes a tremendous amount of creativity to use them all effectively and still produce a good end product for your readers.

SEO can be subjective at times. While there will always be differences of opinion, and trial and error is a god part of certain aspects, objectivity is certainly not absent. There are a number of ways to approach your SEO and each has it’s camp of cheerleaders, but regardless of the approach, the main principles are constant and the end result is always seen as the same.

The algorithms change, but they do exist, and at any given time there are definite rules which must be followed to achieve results. Panda is a perfect example of this. Sites that adjusted quickly thrived and ate up a lot of search results territory they previously didn’t have. Those that failed to adjust or waited too long lost out big. A year later, some still haven’t adjusted.

Google, Yahoo and Bing’s algorithms are ever changing, which is why there is always a need for SEOs who are full on geeks that  reverse-engineer those algorithms and find the cracks to exploit. The more you know about the algorithms, the better you can attack them and adjust to any changes in the future. If you have been depending on luck and wishes from genies in a bottle, you need to adjust. Again, SEO is a science!

You need to use all the data you can gather to make decisions effectively. There is no point in only using a little data when there is a world of data out there that can be easily analyzed. Find out what applies to you, see what you can do with it and then act on it. You have to create a benchmark against which to score your Content, Keyword Choices, PageRank, Indexation, Internal Links, Inbound Links, Hierarchical Linking Structure, HTML Templates and CSS

Examine all urls, title tags, internal anchor text, keyword prominence, H1s, and meta descriptions to make sure that everything is as it should be. Deconstruct your site and distill all the data you can from each component to figure out what your algorithm should be. Once you do that, you have completed a scientific assessment of your current SEO and how to improve it through a logical progression of steps. That is when you will see true SEO success!