It’s always interesting how someone says something and it prompts me to write a post. Usually it’s a question that someone asks, but this time it was a comment that someone made about SEO so me being me I feel I need to clarify my point of view regarding who should be carrying out the SEO for a business.

I think everyone that understands what’s necessary to carry out the tasks required for search engine optimisation would agree that time is a big factor. SEO isn’t particularly difficult, but it certainly takes time to get things in place that will help with search engine ranking.

My piece here though is about who should be taking control of these tasks. It’s true that an SEO company can do many of the tasks such as NAP and directory submissions and thereby free up the time of the business owner. But what about those tasks that the business is likely already doing that in fact may be having a harmful effect on the businesses web site ranking, but really is likely always to be done by the website owner. What am I talking about? Well the main thing is images. Since the advent of the content management system, the business owner has been more likely to be adding the content to the site. In my experience though, nine times out of ten, the business owner is uploading images that are far to large. How does this impact SEO? Well, if the images are too large the site will slow down. If the site is slow it will have a detrimental effect on the SEO as site speed is a major SEO signal.

I would ask. How likely is it that an SEO company will be uploading the images for the website? Not likely I reckon. Therefore surely there needs to be either some sort of training of the website owner by the SEO company or risk the efforts of the SEO company being wasted. At the very least there needs to be collaboration between the SEO company and their client, the website owner, to ensure that all aspects of SEO are covered properly.

Personally I think it’s better to train the business owner in how to do the SEO and include within that training, how to optimise images for the web.

That’s just the images. What about page titles? A reasonable amount of thought needs to go in to the text for the meta title. Can the SEO company do this without not just consulting the website owner on which keywords they want to be ranked for but what the likelihood is that the site would even be ranked for the keywords in this ever competitive world of internet marketing.

SEO is a technical exercise. The marketing of the business needs to be taken into account along side. I don’t see how these things can be done separately. This is why my content marketing club exists. So that businesses get the benefit of everything they need to make SEO work and not just bits of it.

Has this post left you with questions? Perhaps you don’t agree? I love a good debate so why not contact me for a coffee and I can explain why SEO is so important but also why everything must be considered for it to be effective. Call me on 01603 383477 or send me a message.