Choosing An SEO Expert? The IR Litmus Test, Part I

The online marketing industry is full of purported SEO experts that know
very little about how search engines work or the document indexing process.
What I have come to find is that these 'experts' are always just
regurgitating catch phrases and tactics that they have overheard in blogs
and forums.

This class of search engine optimizers developed their tactics and
portfolios during SEO's infancy. Low competition, low saturation, and with
relatively under-developed search engines.
Remember when all it took to get a client to the top of the search engines
was to edit the Meta tags?

Not that current tactics are all that more complex. Title tags, focused
content, keyword placement, RSS feeds, link exchanges, and blogs are all in
the current expert's repertoire. Not exactly brain surgery.

This haphazard success is soon going to evaporate though, as competition
increases, more companies continue to migrate online, and the search engines
refine their indexing and relevancy algorithms.

So, why are many SEO experts not as qualified as they purport to be?

The answer lies in the skill sets of the individuals who are becoming search
engine optimizers. Up until now, the bulk of the search engine optimization
profession recruited from the ranks of HTML developers. It actually makes
complete sense if we look at the minimum skills necessary to optimize a
website, and the state of the HTML development industry during the rise of
the SEO industry.

HTML developers were the ideal candidates to quickly move into the
profession because they already possessed the minimal skills necessary to go
behind the website and edit the HTML. I think we can safely assume that to
perform the current SEO, the expert needs to have a decent knowledge of web
development.
Although learning a markup language such as HTML is not that difficult, it
would be a significant roadblock to any newcomer who wanted to enter the
field. The common lay person, or nuclear physicist for that matter, would be
forced to first learn remedial coding skills.

Additionally, when the internet bubble burst (along with the web developers
high paying salaries) no other group was better positioned to identify the
new lucrative opportunities that SEO offered. A huge population of domestic
developers found themselves out of work and being undercut by cheap overseas
labor. Its not surprising that they were able to segue their current
knowledge into offering higher-value services that would position clients
more effectively to their consumers.

The problem is that 95% of these experts have no real idea how the search
engines index web pages, or determine relevancy.
They are simply recycling the formulas of previous SEO success, and
following the latest trial and error trends that someone in the chatroom
'swears by'. Continually implementing and testing, without any underlying
comprehension of the science they are up against. Its like someone without a
bio-related degree trying to recreate evolutionary studies after reading a
paper on Darwinism. Its absurd. They are completely flying blind.

A true SEO expert understands the fundamentals of information retrieval.

This includes document indexing, linguistics, and a strong knowledge of
linear algebra, including stochastic matrices, vector space theory, latent
semantic analysis, and singular value decomposition. This is the key
knowledge that is necessary to understand how the search engines view your
client's website, how that information will be received, and what needs to
be done to increase their ranking.

Unfortunately, this knowledge, which does take a considerable amount of
mathematical expertise, is well beyond the scope of your average HTML web
developer. It has become difficult to not only find enterprise-level
experts, but differentiate them from the rest of the masses.

So how are professional service firms expected to identify which SEO experts
they hire are truly professionals?

In my next segment, I will continue my discussion on the survival of the SEO
expert, in correlation to information retrieval. I will also introduce you
to the IR Litmus Test, which are techniques that a firm can utilize to
accurately qualify SEO experts, and differentiate amateurs from
enterprise-level professionals.

If you would like to join the discussion for this topic, please post a
comment at http://www.ProfessionalServiceMarketing.com

Grant

About The Author: Grant L. Aldrich is an editor for the
http://www.ProfessionalServiceMarketing.com blog. Grant has 6 years of
internet marketing experience with professional firms.
He is Director of Client Services at http://www.leadtank.com