The Meaning Of Life And SEO (Mostly SEO)

I had a paradigm shift in the way I understand SEO. Previous to posting on the forums and emailing a few expert SEOs, I viewed SEO as a largely technical profession, despite my feelings about the creative possibilities of the field. However, after hearing from my elders and betters, I have to admit that SEO is a much broader and more inclusive discipline than I had previously believed. So let me share my understanding of the field at this point.

SEO is actually a very wide-ranging and inclusive field with plenty of room for specialization. And depending on the specialization you choose, you’ll have need of different skills. That said, there were a few universalities that seemed to come out across the board. The first universality was the SEO is not merely web programming. Rather, it is marketing, and therefore a solid understanding of people and marketing tactics is essential to being a successful SEO. A couple of resources that were suggested to me were Malcolm Galdwell’s Tipping Point and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

Another essential skill is risk management. Regardless of what kind of SEO you practice, you need to have a good idea of what will happen when you tweak a page or start a new linking strategy. You don’t want to kick your, or more particularly, your client’s page out of the index.

One skill that was also mentioned, that I actually felt halfway competent at, was writing and content creation. I’ve heard that “content is king” but never has it been so firmly impressed upon me. I’ll never doubt again.

I did get several responses about which technical skills were the most useful (which is what I was driving at initially, although I don’t think I would trade the digression for anything). The general consensus was as follows, in order of importance:

1. HTML
2. Design and CSS
3. Programming (PHP, Perl, Linux, Apache, etc)

Ultimately, my conclusion is that SEO is a holistic discipline in which most or all of these skills are required in order to be truly top-tier. And it just occurred to me that I should turn this into a top ten list. Look for it…

Thanks to Stuntdubl, Graywolf, Black Knight, SEOTutor, and everyone else that chimed in. I look forward to picking your brains to a further extent in the future.