I’ve heard quite a few times that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is easy, that you just need to use keywords on your website and get links to your site and it’s all done. It’s easy.
So is it really that easy?
In theory, SEO is quite straightforward (or ‘easy’) and that probably explains the tens of thousands of SEO experts and agencies all around the world.
Yes, it is easy to learn the basics, the theory behind SEO. One can read a book or attend a 2 hour SEO seminar and the eyes will open to the amazing world of SEO and Google and it may seem like you know so much after a very short time.
As a result, it is very easy to impress a non-SEO person with even a very basic SEO knowledge, amaze them with the opportunities SEO presents and many ‘cool’ strategies to get them to ‘page 1 in Google’; however for those who know a little more about SEO, it is obvious that sometimes this knowledge is only a ‘second-hand’ knowledge as opposed to the real knowledge based on experience and real results.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that SEO is easy. If it’s easy for every website or business owner, how do you then outperform your competitors? Being ‘easy to do’ for everyone means it’s actually quite challenging and highly competitive – so by nature not really that easy after all. You need to do more and/or do it better!
Some website owners believe they can do it all by themselves. I believe that a good SEO needs to be integrated into many other business activities and only the business owners or managers have the full capability to implement the recommendations and make things happen. Some level of in-house SEO knowledge is therefore needed – to understand where SEO fits within your company, what is really important to do, what will provide real, long-term SEO benefits.
SEO is evolving, SEO requires real experience and knowledge that cannot be gained just from reading a book or attending a course. While books and courses do provide highly valuable information about SEO and will empower you by giving you new knowledge and contribute to critical thinking – asking the right questions, a website owner or a manager needs a proper SEO strategy and guidance to do what really matters and do it right – to focus on what is really required, activities that are worth doing.
“If something is not worth doing at all, it’s not worth doing well.” Charlie Munger likes this quote.
SEO that really works requires input from an experienced SEO individual, who’s done it in the past and can identify the strengths and unique characteristics of every business and properly align SEO with other activities – with an input from a business owner/manager. The implementation part needs to be done by working closely with the business.
You shouldn’t fully outsource your SEO work. The cross-over between SEO and your product strategy, comms, web development, online marketing, brand, sales, etc. is quite significant. A fully outsourced SEO is unlikely to be properly aligned with your other business activities and is much less likely to be sustainable and successful. SEO is too important to be fully outsourced.
Even a seemingly straightforward (‘easy’) task as selecting the right targeted keywords requires a good amount of effort as this phase is critical for all other SEO activities. Just having a list of keywords to target “on your website”, because they have high search volumes is nowhere near adequate. Consider relevancy, competition, IA (information architecture), brand alignment, product positioning, new content opportunities, etc.
SEO is simple in theory. In practice, a good SEO strategy needs to take into account the strengths and unique points of your business and addresses the weaknesses. It needs to be specific to your website, business and the industry – especially when it comes to ‘link building’ (or as I prefer to call it ‘online visibility improvements’). Some in-house SEO knowledge is needed to allow you to evaluate and be critical of recommendations you receive from others.