Ok so I want to start this off by saying a few things before I go into my primary point. This post has grown out of the immense pride we take in our work, and the enjoyment we get with helping people and their business succeed online.
So let me start by saying:
- I am all for client interaction and initiative, to grasp the inner workings of the art of SEO. This is why we offer SEO training throughout the duration of the campaign for free, because we feel its our duty to educate the client as much as we can while they are utilizing our knowledge.
- I feel it’s imperative that the client take an interest in what we are doing to their website since they know their business better than we do.
- We are more than happy to explain our process, beliefs, and the white hat strategies we are going to implement to successfully improve their rankings, traffic, and conversion.
- Transparency and proactive behavior is a vital part that aids with the success of the clients website and makes our jobs easier.
Where problems arise is with an overactive client, one who has read a blog post, forum post (please stay away from these they are usually filled with speculations and false theories) or bought one of the many SEO books on the market (most are pretty good), and now think they are an expert. The ego in them takes over thinking “hey I can do this stuff it seems pretty easy” and they start changing their website without notifying us or the consultant they are using of the changes or even that they are going to make changes.
There are many aspects to SEO and most involve testing and wisdom that is gained over years of practicing the art of SEO. In the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, he states that to become and expert at anything it takes a person an average of 10,000 hours of doing that which they want to become and expert at before they can truly understand the details and knowledge needed to accomplish that thing. So doing a little math…carry the one… add the location of the orbiting moon… so if you consumed yourself with learning (testing, building, and more testing) SEO for 8 hours a day 365 days a year, then in about 3.4 years you would be at a level that you could call yourself a master (or close to it).
So where does this leave the person or company who is overly proactive and decides they can do things on their own, well most of the time it puts them right back to where they were when they hired us or their consultant. So I beg you, before you (Mr. client) think you can do what it takes the best SEO’s years and years to learn, talk to us, use us (that’s what we are here for) and don’t think just because you read a book on anatomy that you can be a surgeon.
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