I found this great article at http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/7-minute-seo-guide and it’s perfect for small business owners who want to try and understand what exactly is involved in the SEO process. If you’re in the SEO business, you’ve probably heard a million times something like, “Can’t you just market my website? Why do we have to change it?”
If I got paid a dollar everytime I’ve heard that, I’d be retired now!
Anyway, the author of this article breaks down the SEO process into 3 major steps…
1. Structure – the web language used, navigation, and rich media all have an impact on whether the search engines are able to crawl and understand the theme of your web site.
2. Content – search engine spiders are really quite dumb. Your web content needs to match-up with the user’s query or your site won’t be found.
3. Links – the search engines look at the quantity, quality, and relevance of the links pointing to a web site.
He then breaks down each step into the smaller components of what needs to be done in order to get each step corrected. It’s really a great article, give it a read!
But to just interject my own personal thoughts on this article…
I think it’s important that website owners understand that there is no program that does all of this for anyone. It’s not as if an SEO webmaster can enter in the website address of your company’s website into a program and then magically the website is corrected and links are coming in and keywords are found and placed. All these factors are done manually, by a person (or persons) and they take time. It’s not unusual to spend 5-10 hours on keyword research. It’s not unusual to spend 30-40 hours on re-creating a website structure and it’s not unusual to spend 1 hour per day on link exchanges.
SEO is not brain surgery, it’s not difficult. But it is time consuming and that is the reason many businesses give up on performing the SEO themselves. It simply takes up too much of their time. After all, they have a business to run! But make no mistake, the ROI from SEO services is very, very, very good! So, the next time you talk to an SEO professional think about the time that’s involved in the process of the job you’re asking them to do. This may help you when they give you their price.
