Everyone is an expert at Search Engine Optimisation

Today i've received another email from a well meaning person who has had a good look at a client's website and has sent me a really long email full of observations and tips that I could use to improve the website in question.

My first reaction run along the lines of ****** *****! then i remembered that a person's ego can often times be their biggest stumbling block and greatest impediment to success, so putting my initial reaction behind me, a read the email a second time.  The email was really well put together and contained useful ideas and observations some were wide of the mark, others were interesting.

As web designers we almost never ask for feedback from people other than the client.  There are many reasons for this, the simplest is of course that you can't please everyone and if you ask twenty different people their opinions you will get twenty different opinions.   If you try and work those twenty different opinions into a web site design or your search engine optimisation strategy you will wind up with a web site that pleases no one and ultimately fails to do it's job.  You can die of having too many doctors, your site can die from having too many directives.

Setting up a sucessful seo strategy is a bit like taking a bow and firing an arrow to it's target.  It's good if you can clearly see the target in question and it's even better if you can get expert advice from people that have fired the bow before and have a sucessful history of hitting not just that target but many different targets at different ranges and sizes.  

Taking advice from a client's customer might at first seem like a silly thing to do, but it can help occasionally if someone is already at the target web site in question and can shout some directions to you.  This is where customer feedback comes in. Returning to the list, not all of the suggestions are going in, but the ones that are most congruent with the site's goal definately are.

At Nice Site Solutions we spend the bulk of our time learning new things, coding developments, web site design developments, new tips and tricks for search engine optimsation or the latest developments and changes from the big names like Google and Yahoo, understanding these new things and adding them to the vast bank of existing knowledge for integration is time consuming and hard work.  Applying this mix of knowledge to a new site strategy is even harder, to make it work we have to have visible and attainable goals.  Does this make us experts?  The short answer is no?  We are increasingly expert which is all anyone can be in this ever changing field.  Hence my initial reaction when I got the email.  The person in question does none of the above and doesnt work in web design or development or even on page site optimisation or search engine optimisation, not even internet marketing.  All of the above I spent years learning.  So you can forgive my initial thoughts on getting the email.  Like I say I reconsidered it, because in one important way the customer is an expert, they are an expert at using the site in question, which is why the feedback becomes important.  Best advice for anyone in a similar position is to solicit opinions, not just any opinions though, but the opinions of those close or at the target and the opinions of those that have fired the arrow before you.  With all that expert help you wont go wrong!