De-Voodoo-fying SEO

Last week, I was talking with a colleague who was telling me some of the challenges she was facing with clients new to the online world.

“They have a really hard time understanding a lot of this search engine stuff.  To them, SEO is Voodoo.”

First, I laughed.  Then, I got angry.  It annoys me when one group of people uses knowledge to confuse or mislead another group rather than to educate.  This is what business owners are experiencing with internet marketing in general, and SEO specifically.  Certain people and companies that know more about SEO than the business owners have led them to believe that SEO is a complex dark art that can only be learned by a select few with years of experience, and who have made livestock sacrifices at the feet of Stan the T-Rex at Google’s campus.  Both parts of that statement are equally false.

So who’s responsible for spreading this confusion around SEO?
There are two main culprits in the misapprehension of SEO.  The first is the major search engines, and yes, I’m going to single out Google.

Google has spent years convincing us all that they’re Not Evil.  I’ve used their products.  I’ve given them a lot of my personal info.  I’ve visited their campus.  I’m fairly convinced that they are Not Evil.  Despite this, whether purposely or not, Google has mysticized their search algorithm.

I am not blind.  I understand the reasons for not publishing their algorithms, but the secrecy and mystique goes beyond that.  I attended a seminar at Google earlier this year where one of the speakers could not make the event, and so someone from their product team came on as a substitute.  The sub was obviously not as prepared as the speaker would have been.  That’s not to say he couldn’t speak intelligently to the topic.  He could.  What he wasn’t prepared for was what he could and could not reveal.  During that speech, a fellow Googler was sitting in the front row with an open laptop and giving thumbs up or down to pieces of information that could and could not be shared with the room.  The end effect of this was to leave everyone in that room feeling like Google is sitting on info so valuable, that it could alter the course of history itself.  It must be magic!

The other culprit, and this one is bigger than even Google, is Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs).  SEOs pitch customers by telling them that the process of optimizing a site for search is so complex and requires so much expertise that the client couldn’t possibly do it herself.  That pisses me off, because quite frankly, it’s bullshit.

Demonstrating expertise in an area is a common way to sell services.  If that expertise is scarce, and you’re one of the few people who possesses it, you can charge a premium.  This is why professionals with highly specialized skill sets get paid a lot of money.  Need open heart surgery?  You need a cardio-thoracic surgeon.  Being sued for millions of dollars?  You need a lawyer.  Did the machinery that runs your factory make a loud bang noise and is now spewing black smoke?  You need an engineer.  Do you want to optimize your website for search?  You need an SEO firm…  or a few books and a willingness to learn.

SEO isn’t Voodoo.  SEO is a skill like any other.  In fact, it’s a skill you can pick up fairly quickly.

If SEO isn’t Voodoo, how does it work?

At their most basic level, all major search engines work the same way.  They match a user’s search query to the content of a website.  How they determine which website is going to be displayed first depends on how well a site answers two questions.  First, how closely does the content match the query?  Second, how important is the website?

The way to nail the first question should be obvious.  Create content that includes the queries that people are searching for.  If you want people to find your site when they search for “dog grooming” make sure your site has dog grooming content on it.

The second question seems like it’s more complex, but really, it isn’t.  To determine how important a site is, Google and everyone else looks at two things above all else: 1) how many other sites link to it?  2) are those other sites important?  So, to nail that portion of the analysis, you need to get other important sites to link to you.

Am I over-simplifying?  Of course, but honestly, if you know this, you’re way ahead of the curve. This information is freely available all over the web. The problem is it’s buried under a ton of less important stuff.  There are a host of other factors that play into ranking, but their impact is minimal as compared to what I just outlined.   SEO follows the 80-20 rule.  80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.  All of the rest of the effort gives you incremental gains at best.

Does that mean I shouldn’t hire someone to SEO my site?

I didn’t say that.  I do believe that some sites don’t need to be SEO’d at all.  For instance, if you run a blog, aside from running a SEO-friendly blog theme, I don’t think you should waste time on SEO.  Instead, focus on creating great content that people will want to link to.  SEO will take care of itself.

In other instances, SEO can be very beneficial.  If you’re a local business with a niche product, SEO can be an excellent source of traffic.

At this point, you need to decide if you want to learn how to SEO yourself or if you want to hire someone.  The advantage to hiring someone is that you don’t need to take the time to learn a new skill and suffer through the pitfalls that come with learning.  This should also be your gauge of who to hire.  Hire the SEO firm that offers you a proven track record of results, and promises to save you time and headaches, while providing a quality service.  Do not hire the SEO firm that tells you that you need to hire them because SEO is just too complicated to be done by anyone other than them.

Whether you decide to SEO yourself, or whether you decide to hire someone to do it for you, all I ask is that you not be scared of search engines.  SEO is not Voodoo.  It’s just misunderstood.

What’s your take?  Have I over-simplified things?  Do you think SEO should be performed by a professional at all costs?  Are you a practitioner of Voodoo and are offended that I compared your religion to SEO?