Hi there! I must admit I’m feeling a little frustrated today. It was suggested today that SEO should be more of a “boxed” approach, where you give a site owner a set amount of content, a set amount of paid links (bad as they are!), directory submissions (because it’s so 2001!), all without much customer support and minimal reporting. It’s a production line approach, and I’m simply not down with it. I feel that SEO and social media is an art – you work with the client on a unique, creative strategy that can help set them apart from the pack, and then continually tweak that stategy as you go along.

The emphasis in SEO should be on Innovation. I understand that the core SEO tactics, like SEO content and quality links, apply to most any site. But the methods of actually making SEO content and links successful varies so dramatically from site to site. SEO content doesn’t have to just meet SEO content best practices – it can, and should, be written creatively to also be link bait. Paid text links are in my opinion a complete waste. Besides the potential for being penalized by search engines, no one’s going to see your site’s tiny text link on another site. Taking the time to network with blogs and sites in your industry and giving them an actual reason to link to you will not only help your rankings, but most likely your site will also receive traffic from them.

This sort of boxed approach honestly makes me worry about the SEO industry. Yes, SEO companies want to make money, but the companies that are going to last are the ones who create custom SEO campaigns and know that every client should have a unique strategy.

<Pulls hair out>