An SEOs Job is to Promote and Protect

Posted by JohnCarcutt
January 14, 2006

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Years ago when I first entered the world of online marketing, we had one task; “get more traffic”. The world is not that simple anymore and neither is online marketing. Today’s SEO is much more than just a traffic hound. The knowledge and skills required to promote a web site encompass every aspect of the site’s existence. The SEO must be just as fluent talking “tech speak” with the IT department as he is discussing the subtleties of language with the copywriting department. A quick meeting with Design about new CSS implementations followed by a few questions about geo-targeting by Marketing should be no big deal to a competent SEO.

Unfortunately, SEO has become a “hot topic” and more and more people are reading articles and blogs about how it works. I say unfortunately, because while there is a ton of information about SEO online, there are still a very small number of experienced and competent professionals working today. Anyone with a website can claim to be an SEO expert. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen “very basic” optimization questions asked on the SEO forums by people selling SEO services.

Even as recent as a year ago, an SEOs primary responsibility was to “promote” a web site. However, more and more I find myself in the role of “Protector”. Someone will have an idea for a site feature or technology change and as the SEO it is up to me to make sure this change will not hurt the web site in anyway, search wise. Inevitably, someone in an organization will read about a “cool” new technique to get better search placement. I find I must be on constant guard against these “Armchair Optimizers”. Usually, they don’t see the whole picture or understand that the information they found is years out of date.

Every person involved with a website has the potential to get it banned from the search engines. As the SEO it’s your job to see that they don’t. You must be able to communicate with and educate people in every department and at every level of an organization. While you continue to steadily drive new targeted traffic to your site, you must also remain an ever vigilant protector of your sites search integrity.