There are literally thousands of people and firms out there offering SEO services, everyone from the high school kid with a programming background to the Yellow Pages Directory. There is this misconception, often even at the highest levels of business, that Search Engine Optimization is a function of technology, and therefore should be the responsibility of a person or company who is a “Tech Geek”. The problem is that this is simply ridiculous, it would the equivalent of suggesting that the person who repairs your television should be producing TV commercials. While there are a number of very capable and creative minds who offer SEO services and who cut their teeth in the industry via the technology route, it is a mistake to assume that it is a technology related field.
While Search Engine Optimization is a process that involves the Internet as a medium, SEO is a marketing function. This is an important distinction that business owners and managers need to understand and accept if they plan to be successful with their online marketing strategy. Every page on a website serves a purpose, and needs to be crafted in a manner that facilitates that purpose. Every website needs to have an established set of distinct goals, and it must be crafted in a manner which targets accomplishing those goals.
Case in point, a realtor wants to use her website for generating leads for her portfolio of properties for sale. It would make little sense to spend resources targeting keywords and traffic which clearly fail to meet this goal. It would make even less sense to create pages which may rank for appropriate keywords, but fail to convert that traffic into qualified leads. These are marketing questions, not technology. Sure, technology helps to facilitate lead generation by incorporating code and widgets which allow for website visitors to enter their contact information, but that is the least difficult part of this equation. Getting the eyeballs on the page, and converting those eyeballs into useful assets is where skill and strategy is required.
The role of an SEO is to work with sales and marketing, to build a online strategy best suited for your company and the people looking for your company. That strategy includes a number of skills specific to SEO, such as keyword research, link building, or content generation and they all require planning and implementation. This is one of the reasons why Vancouver SEO spends one on one time with our clients working to design a strategic plan before even one page content is developed or one link is posted. These are the hallmarks of a successful internet marketing program, not ill-planned mass link campaigns or rogue content generation blindly targeting random keywords.
Who is currently handling your the role of search engine optimizer for your company website? Is your website responsible for a significant portion of sales? What is the strategy behind your website?
These are important questions that you should know right off the top of your head. Search Engine Optimization is not about secret tips on how to beat the Google Algorithm, it is an organized approach to building your website and attracting visitors through an established and organized plan of attack.