SEO KISS

No, it’s not a new cover band of SEO professionals wearing makeup, it’s just my way of saying that getting results from search engine optimization doesn’t have to be that hard–keep it simple, stupid.

What I mean is that as I frequent SEO websites and read the SEO blogs I see a lot of very detailed discussions about the science of search engines, how they work, and how you can refine your SEO strategy down to the tiniest aspects. But when it comes to making money as an SEO firm, how important is it to stay up to date on all these tiny details?

Sure, it’s fun to know all the little secrets, and it certainly doesn’t hurt unless you become so obsessed with the minutiae that you ignore the big stuff, but when the vast majority of the potential market is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the way of SEO, I have to wonder if us SEO professionals are getting way ahead of the game.

Maybe your situation is different than mine. Perhaps you have clients in a hyper-competitive industry and every little difference counts. Most of my clients are such that I can go in and tweak some title tags, clean up their code, write some content, recruit a few backlinks, and within a few weeks they’ve shot up in the rankings and start getting real results. I don’t have to dig into the latest and greatest techniques, I can focus on the very simple aspects of SEO that have been well-known for years, and in most cases that gets the job done.

This doesn’t mean I ignore what’s going on and I’m not saying you can ignore the websites, blogs, and message boards talking about everything SEO. There’s no telling when something I’m doing might turn out to be wrong and I need to know that as soon as possible. There’s no telling when some new tool might come out that makes my job easier. All I’m saying is that for most of the clients I see, keeping it simple is better until such time as their industry really gets on board with SEO and more sophisticated approaches are called for. And I guess the other thing I’m saying is that I think there is a hugely underserved market out there of small-time clients who could benefit from very simple SEO techniques provided at low cost, but so many of us seem focused on getting the higher-end clients that I think we’re missing out on the larger opportunity.