SEO has always been considered a specialist skill that only a few, highly intelligent, people know how to do and understand it. Without making us as consultants sound like we aren’t clever, SEO isn’t this at all. It’s like everything else in life – if someone can break it down into its simplest form and it’s put it into a context that anyone can understand and relate to, SEO can make perfect sense. However there is no denying that being an SEO consultant means you do need to be technically savvy and understand the web. But you don’t need to have a degree in computer science and solve Rubik’s cubes in under a minute to understand SEO, but I am a speedcuber and can solve a Rubik’s cube in under a minute just to let you know!
Do You Really Need SEO Training?
There isn’t really a right or wrong answer to this question, it really depends on the situation, the reason behind why you want to learn SEO and your understanding already. SEO training comes in lots of different forms so it can be really difficult to seek out the best course and one that represents the best value. If you are concerned with the fact you are about to embark on an unknown journey into the veritable mist of SEO, you need not be. Search Engine Optimisation is not a technique that is ‘behind the scenes’. A lot of customers think they won’t be able to see the SEO and that we are hiding stuff from Google. In actual fact, and to most peoples’ surprise, we are showing Google everything it needs to see on the site and off the site. Imagine for a minute that you are Google and you control a massive search engine and all its results. How would you filter the best results? Well, you have to do it by quality right? The answer is yes that’s what Google is currently doing. The next question is how can you assess the quality? Well, if you think about it you need to be able to see the quality otherwise it doesn’t exist to everyone. So the tactics that hide SEO work or the theory that SEO is not done on a website directly and it won’t be seen by potential customers, or that you can hide everything for just Google to see doesn’t exist. SO if this is a reason you feel you need training then I have basically done that in a nutshell for you; it’s harder to teach you how to solve a Rubik’s cube!
SEO Training
If you do a Google search for SEO training you will see lots and lots of different courses, schools, one to one sessions and on site training. But there is a common theme here. They teach you SEO, sometimes in a day maybe even a week but the ever growing change that happens in SEO means that you can learn it in one week, but a few months down the line and some of your training may still be relevant, but a lot of it will no longer be relevant. You have to learn SEO by constantly keeping up to date with the growing trends. What most people know that Google is a fantastic search engine and this is most definitely true. But have you ever considered what makes Google such a great search engine? It’s not really because it’s advertised all over the place and it isn’t because they try to get you to search engine all the time. If you don’t quite believe that statement, why is it that 20,400,00 times a month in the UK Google gets searched on in its own search tool bar. That’s twenty million four hundred thousand times a month on average. Google isn’t the best search engine because of its marketing, it’s the best search engine because of its search results. It concentrates on quality and getting the quality results direct to you as a customer to Google. If you see poor websites in the results you associate that problem with Google so it is in their interest to make sure this doesn’t happen in any way surely?
Why Google
No doubt about it Google is the biggest search engine out there. But like I mentioned before, it wouldn’t be if it didn’t find the quality results to put into its search engine. As a user I am sure you can relate to doing a search for something , finding a website on the first page, clicking into it and bouncing straight off because it wasn’t quite what you were looking for. Well Google is proactively monitoring this through the search engine, analytics and various other tools. So you as a customer to Google and this potential result it brings up exactly, I mean exactly, is what you are looking for when you have searched for it. A lot of people will search in Google several times to find what they are looking for I know I am guilty of this. The reason I personally do this is is say I start my search for say a t shirt. I type the search term into Google, then click the first result but it didn’t quite add up to what I was looking for. I go back to the results and number two isn’t quite right either. I go back once again. I then stop and re-search something so type in a different keywords. Usually and more often than not it’s more focused so something like polo shirts may be even going for even more detail – blue striped polo shirt. Now the results are different I do the same thing this time as the first result – I find it has several different blue polo t’shirts – great! exactly what I want. But how did Google know that this was the result I wanted? Well the page that got returned talked in great detail about the search term I typed in and may be had a thousand words to say about it. It had relevant images with Alt text saying “blue polo shirt. The Page title, Header 1 Tag and Meta description all were talking about the keyword or saying it. To finish that off there were several external quality links pointing to it saying the keyword I searched for. This is the reason it was number 1 in Google not because it was “hiding stuff just for SEO” but because the site matched it perfectly and it was all there for both the customer to see and for Google.
Guidance is Key
As an SEO company ourselves we find it highly important for us to help our clients to show them the work we do. It has to make sense to you as a client, if you don’t understand the process or concept behind it then it is difficult to buy into it. As a customer you have to buy into it and believe it works. That way when we ask for unique, keyword focused, 1000 word articles for the site or any SEO company does, then the customer understands the value behind it. It is worth the time and effort to go away and write the article not just be told to do it, because it will help a little, but rather to be asked to do it because it sets you apart from the competition.
After reading this article hopefully you can understand my point that it is not important to have any SEO training before you do SEO or before you understand it. What is important is that you know it’s all about quality links, it’s all about quality content, it’s all about a quality website and last but certainly not least its all about quality!
