SEO: Is Search Engine Optimisation As Technical As You Think It Is?

SEO Experts would have you believe that it is a really technical skill that you could not possibly begin to understand. But is it really for geeks? Or is it for marketers? I would argue that the latter are better placed to make a good job of it.

I have been involved in the IT industry for twenty years. I started using email when it was in it's infancy, and I started using the internet as soon as I heard the word. I didn't recognise the opportunity in the internet until about two years ago (Doh!) which is a shame because I could have been retired many years ago if I had.

It's only during that last two years that some of the myths surrounding the online world have started to become apparent to me. I'm talking about the simple stuff - 'you have to understand html to build websites', 'you need technical support to host your site', and 'Search Engine Optimisation is for really technical geeks and it's all about meta data'.

OK, the SEO task does require that you understand the meta tags, but once someone has shown you what they are, and how simple they are to update, then the myth starts to unravel and you realise that it's really all about understanding markets and what they're looking for. The role is really a marketing one.

Let me take you through the process of SEO optimisation. The very first part of the SEO process (ideally done before you decide what you're going to sell) is keyword analysis. You are using tools, available online, to assess which keywords your prospects are typing in when they're searching. You are checking this against your competitor's sites, and you are understanding which sites are top of the listings, and why they are there.

When you understand which are your key words and phrases for SEO, you are ready to start working on your site. You carry out the optimisation by updating the meta data (mainly the title, description and keywords sections in the html) - but if you're using an editor such as Front Page, you do this by updating the Page attributes. It's not technical, and it's plain English. You then have to make sure that the content of the site reflects the keywords by writing about the subject that your website claims to be about.

Think about this from the perspective of the search engines and you'll start to 'get it'. The search engines want to be popular with the people who are searching, because this is necessary if people are going to come back and use them again. The owners of the websites are of secondary importance by comparison. So if you go to Google and type in a search phrase, you want to find relevant content that you are looking for, otherwise you'll be disappointed.

If you type in 'Football results' you will expect to find football results. Google will rank the sites pertaining to have football results by looking at their meta data, and then looking at the content, and finding a level of consistency... the user is looking for 'football results' - the site says it is about 'football results' and the content confirms that it is indeed about 'football results' - everyone is happy.

A great deal of the SEO process is also about establishing a site's popularity by getting links from other relevant and popular sites. This is in fact the single most important part of the SEO process and will give the highest Google listing if carried out correctly.

Many SEO projects will try and get a huge number of links, probably by using services which submit link requests in bulk on your behalf. This is OK, but quality of links will always improve your site's rankings more than quantity, so it's important to spend some time seeking out relevant quality sites (look at the site's Google Page Rank for a clue) and making link requests. Do a few of these each day, and you'll soon see yourself climbing in the listings.

Of course the best way to get high quality links back to your site, is to give people a reason to publish information about you on their sites. This can be done in many ways, but there are two main avenues open to the SEO consultant. These are press releases, which are published on web sites many times over, and similarly articles (such as this one) which likewise provide quality links if they are published in the right places.

So if you read back over this article and give it some thought, who is best placed to carry out the SEO Consultant's task? The technical geek or the marketing exec?

Of course there's an obvious issue here. Most marketing execs have been led to believe that SEO is a technical thing, and they would run away from it (as I used to myself), so this is an appeal to the marketing world. Don't be afraid to find out about SEO. It could transform your career, and your company's fortunes.

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