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Suggest You - Choosing an SEO Expert? The IR Litmus Test, Part I
The question for anyone who wishes to start a business is; what kind of business should one start? Well if you mechanically inclined and love cars, but do not have $100,000 to start with, what kind of a business might you like? Perhaps you have considered a Mobile or On Site Oil Change Business. But then you ask your self is it indeed a viable business?Well having been in the business for a spell my observations are this. The repetition of the customer is not very high. Every 3-5 months at 3000 mile intervals; 6-10 months for 5,000 mile intervals for
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes documen
Let me illustrate my point with a true story….To set the scene, imagine the Main Hall at a successful Trade Show. There is that hum in the air that signifies lots of visitors talking business with lots of stallholders.At a Trade Show everyone knows everyone else. They’re all in the same market and many are friends of long standing.Our culprit is the CEO of one of the bigger players in the industry. Let’s call him Dave.Dave’s company had built a large opulent stand and business was brisk. Dave had a bar built into h
This class of search engine optimizers developed their tactics and portfolios during SEO's infancy. Low competition, low saturation, and with relatively under-developed search engines. Remember when all it took to get a client to the top of the search engines was to edit the Meta tags?
Not that current tactics are all that more complex. Title tags, focused content, keyword placement, RSS feeds, link exchanges, and blogs are all in the current expert's repertoire. Not exactly brain surgery.
This haphazard success is soon going to evaporate though, as competition increases, more companies continue to migrate online, and the search engines refine their indexing and relevancy algorithms.
So, why are many SEO experts not as qualified as they purport to be?
The answer lies in the skill sets of the individuals who are becoming search engine optimizers. Up until now, the bulk of the search engine optimization profession recruited from the ranks of HTML developers. It actually makes complete sense if we look at the minimum skills necessary to optimize a website, and the state of the HTML development industry during the rise of the SEO industry.
HTML developers were the ideal candidates to quickly move into the profession because they already possessed the minimal skills necessary to go behind the website and edit the HTML. I think we can safely assume that to perform the current SEO, the expert needs to have a decent knowledge of web development. Although learning a markup language such as HTML is not that difficult, it would be a significant roadblock to any newcomer who wanted to enter the field. The common lay person, or nuclear physicist for that matter, would be forced to first learn remedial coding skills.
Additionally, when the internet bubble burst (along with the web developers high paying salaries) no other group was better positioned to identify the new lucrative opportunities that SEO offered. A huge population of domestic developers found themselves out of work and being undercut by cheap overseas labor. Its not surprising that they were able to segue their current knowledge into offering higher-value services that would position clients more effectively to their consumers.
The problem is that 95% of these experts have no real idea how the search engines index web pages, or determine relevancy. They are simply recycling the formulas of previous SEO success, and following the latest trial and error trends that someone in the chatroom 'swears by'. Continually implementing and testing, without any underlying comprehension of the science they are up against. Its like someone without a bio-related degree trying to recreate evolutionary studies after reading a paper on Darwinism. Its absurd. They are completely flying blind.
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes documen
Don't think for a minute that all vocal talent is exactly alike. Hiring a voice over artist is not like hiring a plumber. The result you get with one plumber should be what you get with any other plumber—an unclogged drain, a repaired pipe, a fixed problem. A voiceover project is very different, however, because there are so many ways it could be done. Therefore, anyone who needs to hire vocal talent should first know what they need.For instance, for some projects, a TV promo voice is just the thing to make it sing. Another type of project may require
This haphazard success is soon going to evaporate though, as competition increases, more companies continue to migrate online, and the search engines refine their indexing and relevancy algorithms.
So, why are many SEO experts not as qualified as they purport to be?
The answer lies in the skill sets of the individuals who are becoming search engine optimizers. Up until now, the bulk of the search engine optimization profession recruited from the ranks of HTML developers. It actually makes complete sense if we look at the minimum skills necessary to optimize a website, and the state of the HTML development industry during the rise of the SEO industry.
HTML developers were the ideal candidates to quickly move into the profession because they already possessed the minimal skills necessary to go behind the website and edit the HTML. I think we can safely assume that to perform the current SEO, the expert needs to have a decent knowledge of web development. Although learning a markup language such as HTML is not that difficult, it would be a significant roadblock to any newcomer who wanted to enter the field. The common lay person, or nuclear physicist for that matter, would be forced to first learn remedial coding skills.
Additionally, when the internet bubble burst (along with the web developers high paying salaries) no other group was better positioned to identify the new lucrative opportunities that SEO offered. A huge population of domestic developers found themselves out of work and being undercut by cheap overseas labor. Its not surprising that they were able to segue their current knowledge into offering higher-value services that would position clients more effectively to their consumers.
The problem is that 95% of these experts have no real idea how the search engines index web pages, or determine relevancy. They are simply recycling the formulas of previous SEO success, and following the latest trial and error trends that someone in the chatroom 'swears by'. Continually implementing and testing, without any underlying comprehension of the science they are up against. Its like someone without a bio-related degree trying to recreate evolutionary studies after reading a paper on Darwinism. Its absurd. They are completely flying blind.
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes documen
Everyone loves to be appreciated, and when that thanks is expressed with a gift, you’ll make extra points with the gift recipient. Corporate gifts are often thought of as expensive, one-of-a-kind executive style gifts that your company sends out at holidays, but there’s another level of corporate gift-giving that can mark you and your firm as a thoughtful, appreciative company with whom to do business.The wonderful thing about thank you gifts is that they needn’t be expensive, but they can pay off big in exposure for your company and product. There ar
HTML developers were the ideal candidates to quickly move into the profession because they already possessed the minimal skills necessary to go behind the website and edit the HTML. I think we can safely assume that to perform the current SEO, the expert needs to have a decent knowledge of web development. Although learning a markup language such as HTML is not that difficult, it would be a significant roadblock to any newcomer who wanted to enter the field. The common lay person, or nuclear physicist for that matter, would be forced to first learn remedial coding skills.
Additionally, when the internet bubble burst (along with the web developers high paying salaries) no other group was better positioned to identify the new lucrative opportunities that SEO offered. A huge population of domestic developers found themselves out of work and being undercut by cheap overseas labor. Its not surprising that they were able to segue their current knowledge into offering higher-value services that would position clients more effectively to their consumers.
The problem is that 95% of these experts have no real idea how the search engines index web pages, or determine relevancy. They are simply recycling the formulas of previous SEO success, and following the latest trial and error trends that someone in the chatroom 'swears by'. Continually implementing and testing, without any underlying comprehension of the science they are up against. Its like someone without a bio-related degree trying to recreate evolutionary studies after reading a paper on Darwinism. Its absurd. They are completely flying blind.
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes documen
A little while back, a friend of mine asked me how to sell to his e-newsletter list without coming off as being pushy, obnoxious and caring only about extracting as much cash as possible from his customers.I don't blame him for being concerned, either.People are unsubscribing left and right from e-newsletters and lists who do nothing but sell, sell, sell.But here's the thing...All the "selling" isn't the necessarily the problem.The problem is usually what's being sold and to who.Let me explain what I mean:Thre
Additionally, when the internet bubble burst (along with the web developers high paying salaries) no other group was better positioned to identify the new lucrative opportunities that SEO offered. A huge population of domestic developers found themselves out of work and being undercut by cheap overseas labor. Its not surprising that they were able to segue their current knowledge into offering higher-value services that would position clients more effectively to their consumers.
The problem is that 95% of these experts have no real idea how the search engines index web pages, or determine relevancy. They are simply recycling the formulas of previous SEO success, and following the latest trial and error trends that someone in the chatroom 'swears by'. Continually implementing and testing, without any underlying comprehension of the science they are up against. Its like someone without a bio-related degree trying to recreate evolutionary studies after reading a paper on Darwinism. Its absurd. They are completely flying blind.
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes documen
Do you know the value of your work and how to price it? Probably not. As a publisher, distributor and consultant in the art world, I have personally reviewed the work of thousands of artists over the last 30 years. In all of that time only a handful were able to say, “Yes” to that question. Pricing art is actually not that difficult. It is basically no different than pricing any other product. The problem with artists pricing their own work is that they generally don’t view their work with the same eyes that other businesses do. This is because they are em
A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.
This includes document indexing, linguistics, and a strong knowledge of linear algebra, including stochastic matrices, vector space theory, latent semantic analysis, and singular value decomposition. This is the key knowledge that is necessary to understand how the search engines view your client's website, how that information will be received, and what needs to be done to increase their ranking.
Unfortunately, this knowledge, which does take a considerable amount of mathematical expertise, is well beyond the scope of your average HTML web developer. It has become difficult to not only find enterprise-level experts, but differentiate them from the rest of the masses.
So how are professional service firms expected to identify which SEO experts they hire are truly professionals?
In my next segment, I will continue my discussion on the survival of the SEO expert, in correlation to information retrieval. I will also introduce you to the IR Litmus Test, which are techniques that a firm can utilize to accurately qualify SEO experts, and differentiate amateurs from enterprise-level professionals.
You can also keep up to date on the new editions at Professional Service Marketing
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