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What does an SEO do?

June 8, 2007 | Filed Under Online Marketing, SEO 

This is a good one!

I found a forum post over on SitePoint and the question asked by a coder is “If I hire someone to do “SEO” what exactly are they doing?”

As most of you know, I bristle when I hear someone use the term SEO (search engine optimization) because it’s an acronym that makes people think in terms of “CIA” or some other clandestine - very very secret - operation.

My favorite response on the thread (after someone says they cannot reveal what they do, at least without a Non Disclosure Agreement) is that you can say what you do, but it’s how you do it that makes you worth paying for. (That’s totally paraphrased, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?)

If you call me, and ask me how I get your site (and you) noticed by search engines, I’ll tell you exactly what I do to make that happen. I provide a marketing plan in outline form, we discuss it. I’m so full-disclosure it’s not even funny.

But ask an SEO specialist what they do…you can hear the crickets in the silence that follows. (In my experience.) Ok, that’s not entirely true. They say the words “keywords” and “linkbacks” and generally do it in such a way that you feel you can’t ask further questions because it would just be too complicated for you to understand.

Yeah, you can start your own business, deal with networking, scheduling, accounting, and goodness knows what else…but you won’t be able to understand keywords. Maybe you don’t have time to care - that’s ok! But you can certainly understand it. You ARE smart enough.

So if you’re one of the people who’s curious about what an SEO professional does, check out the main post over at SitePoint and let me know via a comment what YOU think about the whole thing.

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