SEO Expert to Organic Web Strategist

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has become more involved over the past couple years including additional activities that need to be performed to stay competitive. An SEO has been upgraded to “Organic Web Strategist“, according to a blog post on SEOmoz by Rand Fishkin.

Sometimes it’s difficult for the average business owner to understand the value of organic search engine optimization, but you should realize that by gaining a #1 ranking on Google for a keyword that would drive 5000 new and relevant visitors a month to your website would mean (even at 1% conversion rate) would equal 50 new sales a month! When you multiply this with your average customer value you can determine how much revenue a #1 ranking would produce on just one highly relevant keyword phrase.

To get an idea of how much additional SEO work is needed to compete, below outlines activities by the SEO era. By no means is this an exhaustive list but provides an outline of how SEO has become more involved, more work. There’s more competition than ever before so it takes more work to get that coveted top tanking for your best converting keywords.

Before 2004 SEO consisted of:

Accessibility:

• Crawlability of Wesbite
• Spider-Readable Content
• Search Engine Friendly Navigation/Architecture
• Limiting any Duplicate Content Issues
• On-Page HTML Sitemaps

Keywords

• Basic Keyword Research
• Keyword Targeting for Individual Web Pages
• On-page in-content Text Links

Link Building:

• Reaching out to other webmasters
• Directories
• Blogs and related Sites
• Guestbook and Signature links

Search Verticals:

• Images

From 2004 to 2008 SEO expanded to include the below items in conjunction with the items above.

Accessibility:

• XML Sitemaps
• Quality Content Creation – no thin content
• Rel=Canonical
• Issues with the Nofollow Tag

Keyword Research now includes:

• Keyword Difficulty Analysis
• Keyword Commercial Value
• Keyword Usage in Images
• Keyword Manipulation generally in Footers

Link Building added:

• Social Media Marketing specifically for Link Building
• Press Release and PR Tactics
• Content Syndication
• Badges and Widgets
• Embedded Content
• Guest Blogging
• Article Marketing
• and more

Search Verticals added:

• Local SEO, Maps and Google Places, Bing Local, etc.
• Video
• Shopping
• News

Here is the over all picture in 2011, these SEO activities and responsibilities include:

Site Accessibility

• Developing a website that can be easily crawled and indexed

Market / Keyword Research and Targeting

• Picking and testing the right keywords, knowing they convert via PPC tests, and then employing them effectively for organic search

Content Strategy

• You need a plan on how to leverage your businesses resources to develop useful, valuable, relevant and share-worthy material

Content Creation

• Creation of blog posts, evergreen content, infographics, interactive works, apps, tools, and more

Link Building

• Investigating, tracking and acquiring high quality links

New Search Protocols

• Schema.org, Rel=Author, Video XML Sitemaps and more

Search Verticals

• Images, local, video, news, blogs, social, mobile, product, and more

Community Management

• Creating and participating in conversations around your brand/sector in beneficial ways to drive awareness

Social Media Promotion

• Utilizing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+1, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, etc., to improve reach and social buzz

Social Network Reach

• Improving the size, depth and breadth of your social networks to reach more potential customers and connections

Reputation Tracking

• Watching your brand’s search results, social media remarks and web content to track success and monitor danger

Local / Maps Optimization

• Optimizing for placement in local search and local portals, both web and social including monitoring local activity

An Organic Web Strategist then would be defined as having many more online marketing responsibilities than the basic or advanced Search Engine Optimizer – as it incorporates many facets of the growing social web. Any business that wants to succeed in the future needs an experienced SEO Company aka organic web strategists to get the results and the ROI that will allow you to continually expand your online marketing efforts.