So You Want To Learn SEO
Many years ago, John Patrick came out with a series of books entitled “So You Want To Be A Gambler” which did very well.
It would have been wonderful if it all was as easy as he claimed, but you can’t have everything. The same can be said about search engine optimization, or SEO for short. Everybody wants to be able to do it so that they can get their web pages climbing up the search engines in a hurry.
Problem is, SEO isn’t as easy as the “how to” books make it sound. This article is going to explain some of the difficulties of SEO without actually getting into the “how to” of the process. Hopefully, after reading this, you will have a pretty good idea if SEO is something you want to tackle on your own.
The first problem with SEO in itself is that it isn’t just one thing, or even a few things. SEO is a complex process that involves many steps. Leaving out even just one of those steps could mean the difference between a page one listing and a page 101 listing.
Yes, things can get that tricky. And because SEO is a complex process, it is also a very time consuming process. Most people simply don’t have the hours in the day to do their own SEO. If they tried, they’d end up neglecting the actual running of their business. This is why most people outsource this process to those who know what they’re doing, do it for a living, and can do it a lot faster.
Another problem with SEO is that it is an ever changing and ever evolving beast. An SEO tactic that worked a year ago may not be so effective today. You have to constantly keep your eye out on your search engine rankings to see if they are going up or down.
This is not an easy thing to do as sometimes your rankings will go up and down like a yo-yo. When this happens, it is hard to know what to fix, if anything. Many times, you are left throwing your arms up in the air and just leaving things to chance. It can be very frustrating.
Another problem with SEO is that the search engines themselves are constantly changing their algorithms. Most of the time, this is done to penalize cheaters. And trust me, there are plenty of cheaters out there, which of course brings up another problem with SEO.
If you’re not sure of what you’re doing, you may inadvertently do something that will get your site flagged and booted out of the directory listings. And trust me, it only takes one thing. Writing to them and saying, “Sorry, I didn’t know” isn’t going to matter with them. When you’re banned, you’re usually banned for life.
So before you decide that SEO is something that you really want to learn and do yourself, just remember, it can turn out to be real ugly if you don’t understand it completely.
