I’m always amazed by the amount of businesses of all sizes who pay big money to get a website created and then sit back and expect the business, sales leads, and sales to come flowing in automatically – and are then shocked and taken aback when they don’t. Often they will go back to the web designer and take them to task over the issue.

However, while the business owner is berating the unfortunate web designer they have forgotten one key detail…

The web site designer is just that. A web site designer. And he has completed what he was asked to do and created a great looking website for the business owner. It’s very probable that what he is NOT is an SEO professional! But that probably doesn’t matter as it is almost guaranteed that it never crossed the business owners mind to ask if search engine optimization was included, or if it was included if it covered simply on-page SEO, or off-page SEO as well.

Sometimes the problem is ‘unconscious incompetence’ on the part of the business owner. That’s not meant to be insulting. It is simply a technical term for when you simply can’t ask relevant questions about something, not because you can’t think of a decent question, but because you don’t even know that thing exists or never had any experience of it. In other words, you can’t ask questions about SEO if you’ve never even heard of it!

But is a web site designer really the most suitable person to be dealing with your search engine optimization for you? Okay, it is very convenient if on-page SEO is taken into account and carried out as the web site is getting created, but getting a person who simply dabbles in SEO, or THINKS they know SEO is not a good idea!

Why not?

Well, the search engines are continually altering the algorithms that they use to work out who gets ranked where. Keeping abreast with these changes and what works and doesn’t work NOW all takes a considerable amount of time. It’s no good knowing the things worked a year or two ago, because they may not work now, and in fact using these ‘old’ techniques can actually do more harm than good.

Keyword stuffing, tiny text, and hidden (or almost hidden) text are just some of the examples of SEO tricks that used to work and could frequently get you high placement, but today would almost certainly end up in getting your page or website banned or seriously penalised.

For a web site to rank highly in the search engines you HAVE to have on-page SEO, and recurring off-page search engine optimization work performed on the website. There are simply far too many competitors out there for your website to rank well otherwise. And keep in mind that even if you aren’t taking SEO seriously you can be in no doubt that your competitors are! Google doesn’t play favourites. Your competitors rank higher than you because they have paid an SEO professional to make sure that all the elements are in place that Google wants to see in a top ranking and highly relevant web page.

Your web business is far too important to ignore SEO, or worse, to leave it to a well meaning web designer. You HAVE to do search engine optimization PROPERLY, and for that you need an SEO specialist.