Learn SEO To Know How To Do It Right
If you learn SEO, nobody can ever con you into doing black hat tactics that will get your site in deep doo-doo with Google.
You might think this post is going to be a sell for my courses. It's not.
All I want to do is tell you why it's important that you learn SEO for yourself.
If nothing else, you'll at least know the language we speak - bounce rate, 301 redirects, robots.txt file, crawl budget and SERPs. If you don't know or understand what an outsourced SEO organization or consultant is doing to your website, you're at their mercy. I'm sorry to say, I've come across more optimizers who don't want their clients to know what they're doing (so they can't be held accountable) and the ramifications of what they've done.
If you learn how to do SEO, even if you never do it yourself, you will understand what and why an optimizer is doing to your site, and if it's within the recommendations and guidelines that Google publishes. Remember, if you have knowledge, nobody can fool you.
By understanding what SEO consultants do, you'll no longer be in the dark, wondering if what they're doing will even work. When you get reports - and if your SEO contractor is reluctant to do reports, this should be a giant red flag - you'll understand the data you're seeing, and if your site is improving in search results. Otherwise, how the hell will you really know?
If you learn SEO, you'll have a better understanding of how Google works, the search algorithm updates and potential impacts on your site. You may not always like the algorithm changes - it's rare that we do - but you can adjust your strategy and processes quickly to take advantage of the algorithm update benefits. Every search formula update has good and bad to it. You can make positive changes to your site to stay out of trouble.
And, if you do wake up one morning, look at your analytics and see traffic drops, you can methodically and logically troubleshoot website issues that may have impacted your rankings. This won't be a scary mystery to you. Managing your stress and fears through knowledge and information will make things easier.
What's more, you'll be confident when you look at your webmaster tool dashboards from the search engines that you understand what issues, if any, they may have with your site. You can take that information and fix what's not within their guidelines, policies and recommendations for showing up high in search results.
There are other reasons to learn how to do SEO. You may be a project manager or contract administrator for your company's website operations. It's important that you work with others as peers, not as someone who is dependent upon others to do the right thing and tell you the truth.
Until next time, keep it safely between the ditches!
All the very best to you,
Nancy McDonald
Image courtesy of https://www.brickmarketing.com/blog/why-learn-seo.htm
