SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become more involved over the past couple years including additional activities that need to be performed to stay competitive. An SEO has been upgraded to “Organic Web Strategist“, according to a blog post on SEOmoz by Rand Fishkin.
Sometimes it’s difficult for the average business owner to understand the value of organic search engine optimization, but you should realize that by gaining a #1 ranking on Google for a keyword that would drive 5000 new and relevant visitors a month to your website would mean (even at 1% conversion rate) would equal 50 new sales a month! When you multiply this with your average customer value you can determine how much revenue a #1 ranking would produce on just one highly relevant keyword phrase.
To get an idea of how much additional SEO work is needed to compete, below outlines activities by the SEO era. By no means is this an exhaustive list but provides an outline of how SEO has become more involved, more work. There’s more competition than ever before so it takes more work to get that coveted top tanking for your best converting keywords.
Before 2004 SEO consisted of:
Accessibility:
Crawlability of Wesbite
Spider-Readable Content
Search Engine Friendly Navigation/Architecture
Limiting any Duplicate Content Issues
On-Page HTML Sitemaps
Keywords
Basic Keyword Research
Keyword Targeting for Individual Web Pages
On-page in-content Text Links
Link Building:
Reaching out to other webmasters
Directories
Blogs and related Sites
Guestbook and Signature links
Search Verticals:
Images
From 2004 to 2008 SEO expanded to include the below items in conjunction with the items above.
Accessibility:
XML Sitemaps
Quality Content Creation – no thin content
Rel=Canonical
Issues with the Nofollow Tag
Keyword Research now includes:
Keyword Difficulty Analysis
Keyword Commercial Value
Keyword Usage in Images
Keyword Manipulation generally in Footers
Link Building added:
Social Media Marketing specifically for Link Building
Press Release and PR Tactics
Content Syndication
Badges and Widgets
Embedded Content
Guest Blogging
Article Marketing
and more
Search Verticals added:
Local SEO, Maps and Google Places, Bing Local, etc.
Video
Shopping
News
Here is the over all picture in 2011, these SEO activities and responsibilities include:
Site Accessibility
Developing a website that can be easily crawled and indexed
Market / Keyword Research and Targeting
Picking and testing the right keywords, knowing they convert via PPC tests, and then employing them effectively for organic search
Content Strategy
You need a plan on how to leverage your businesses resources to develop useful, valuable, relevant and share-worthy material
Content Creation
Creation of blog posts, evergreen content, infographics, interactive works, apps, tools, and more
Link Building
Investigating, tracking and acquiring high quality links
New Search Protocols
Schema.org, Rel=Author, Video XML Sitemaps and more
Search Verticals
Images, local, video, news, blogs, social, mobile, product, and more
Community Management
Creating and participating in conversations around your brand/sector in beneficial ways to drive awareness
Social Media Promotion
Utilizing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+1, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, etc., to improve reach and social buzz
Social Network Reach
Improving the size, depth and breadth of your social networks to reach more potential customers and connections
Reputation Tracking
Watching your brand’s search results, social media remarks and web content to track success and monitor danger
Local / Maps Optimization
Optimizing for placement in local search and local portals, both web and social including monitoring local activity
An Organic Web Strategist then would be defined as having many more online marketing responsibilities than the basic or advanced Search Engine Optimizer – as it incorporates many facets of the growing social web. Any business that wants to succeed in the future needs an experienced SEO Company aka organic web strategists to get the results and the ROI that will allow you to continually expand your online marketing efforts.