As a newcomer to the Search Engine Optimisation industry, I was very surprised by the amount of different ways SEO can be implemented on a website that you would never see or understand unless you knew what to look for. My own personal experience of SEO, despite having over 6 years of web development under my belt, was limited compared to what I learned in my first week.
To me, SEO was getting your Meta keywords and descriptions included on each page, and submitting your website to a search engine such as Google. Now that I have had the chance to work for a company specialising in SEO, I have learned more in 1 week about search engine optimisation than I have in over 6 years of web development.
What shocked me most was finding out how un-optimised my own websites were after showing them to my colleagues. Within seconds of seeing the sites, they pointed out well over a dozen things I could modify to make the site more optimised. I have to admit, I always thought my sites were doing well with the traffic they receive given I have no advertising. I never realised how much optimisation could boost the visitors, and if I had something to sell, the extra profit that optimisation could potentially produce.
Since I started to learn all of the different techniques SEO implements, I have begun to optimise my own websites so I can see the results for myself. So far I have seen only a 2% average increase in traffic, but SEO is an ongoing process, particularly when there is only one developer (myself) for the website, compared to a dozen or more for official projects. Changes won’t happen overnight, but they will be gradual and noticeable and can be seen if you have Google Analytics implemented on your site to keep tabs on your visitors.
