When you hire an SEO company, there are immediately a few things that can be presumed about you. You’re the owner or one of the operators of a company, and you’re intent on optimizing your website to get higher search engine rankings and more sales. Maybe you also need some assistance with running your social media accounts, or you might want help with a targeted ad campaign. Any of those might be true, or all of them. But how much do you know about the people that you’re hiring, other than that they have specialized skills to help you?

What Is An SEO Specialist?

To someone who doesn’t know much about the concept of website optimization, the job of an SEO specialist can be challenging to explain. You can say something like “an SEO specialist is a person who manipulates websites so that they rank highly with search engines.” While that is true, it also makes an SEO expert sound like some mad scientist whose chosen medium is computers. The fact is, though, that’s not too far off. The SEO specialist is a bit like a scientist who studies something that is in a constant state of flux. In this case, what they’re studying is search engine algorithms, and Google’s in particular. It’s not possible to know everything about the Google algorithm. What it’s composed of is a closely guarded secret. It’s too big, and also, it’s continually changing. Essentially, what an SEO specialist tries to do is interpret through analytics what happens when they make changes to a website. Through a meticulous system of trial and error, they get an idea of what is frowned upon by Google, and what it applauded.

All of this is not to say that Google reveals nothing about its algorithm. On the contrary, they have all sorts of videos and tutorials explaining how best to get your website to rank. These are important learning tools, but they don’t tell us everything. It is also the job of the SEO specialist, then, to decode the minutia, the small details of website design that could seem insignificant, but might be the difference between a top ranking and a considerably lower one.

So, in summation, when you contract an SEO company or marketing firm, you’re probably going to get a group of people with different skills, all of who are working to improve your company’s visibility. It’s a good thing to do. You’re going to get people who are skilled in audiovisual production, social media experts, and website designers. From the SEO specialist, that rare and wonderful breed, you will be getting a detail-oriented person whose studies might prove the difference between your website being mired in mediocrity and rocketing to the top of the rankings.