Could be, but are "SEO experts" actually doing the content creation?

You should not be paying someone more than 5$ an hour to tell you to "create good stuff". Like the article says, most of this isn't hard to figure out. Did you have to hire an SEO expert to get your biology page built?

Also, marketing is about much more than just 'selling stuff'. It's about identifying potential customers, understanding their needs, and shaping the direction of development to meet those needs.

(More broadly I think that most people should not hire "SEO experts" because any one you are able to afford is less competent than you need, but that is another discussion altogether.)

There are many people around these parts who think SEO is useless, dirty, dirty-and-useless, or totally obvious. Those people could benefit enormously from broadening their perspectives a little bit.

For example: I have over 700 bingo activities. I suppose they could have been posted chronologically, like a blog, or alphabetically, like a directory. They aren't -- they're "siloed" into categories, with each category being thematically coherent, and category pages linking to related activities and activities linking to related categories. That is sort of the tip of the information architecture iceberg for my site. It has clear usability and SEO benefits. (If you're looking at Parts of a Cell bingo right now, you're rather more likely to be interested in other Biology bingo activities than Japanese culture bingo.) You might think this is obvious, and indeed, it is that special kind of obvious that no one in my niche bothers to do.

There is also an algorithm for promotion of popular content. (If you took a quick gander around my site right now, you'd notice nearly every page links to a Halloween bingo activity. That is not an accident.) Does "build good stuff" imply to you "You should probably make the link graph on your website dynamically change in response to market conditions and analytics data, because that will maximize conversions and also deliver great SEO benefits"? No, thats just solid SEO -- a bit of marketing, a bit of usability, a bit of tech, and a bit understanding how to play an important game whose umpire makes unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

Once again, trotting out Halloween specials in October is not something you need to hire an SEO expert for.

> unquestionable calls according to a rulebook only they can read.

That's something else that bugs me about the whole "SEO expert" business. They're on the same playing field as you are, and since Google changes and adapts as well, "years of experience" don't really count for a lot.

No one is questioning the value of paying some attention to this stuff - you ignore it at your own peril if you operate on the web. What people find dubious are the "SEO experts" who sell that and only that. If someone's a good web developer, they're going to be able to tell you the same stuff anyway, and probably add more value elsewhere to boot. And all of this commentary is ignoring the genuinely shady operators who have also taken to using the "SEO" moniker, who further muddy the waters.

If you're trotting them out in October you're about five years too late if you're aiming at the top spot on Google. You need those pages to gather authority; part of that is from longevity, partly from past inlinks you've gathered, your linkbait for halloween last year ..... Reuse a page created for "Halloween 2009" from several years ago - which pages looks most authoritative, the one created in Oct 2009 about the subject along with 2 Million others or the one that is 5 years old and has established inlinks perhaps from .edu sites, perhaps one hop from pages with millions of "halloween" inlinks. Oh but your competitor has "halloween2009.com", oh well.

A/B testing is easier than knowing what to test especially if you need to keep ahead of competitors and ontrack with the changes to the search, discovery and marketing environment online.

I don't find the answers to questions like "how much should I spend on getting a higher listing, I'm top 10 now, what's the ROI", "how can I get my competitors indented SERPs links removed", "how can I get a second top 10 listing", "does PR scuplting work", "should I tweet to improve my blog's visibility, what sales return will I expect", "how can I optimise my landing page", "will a shallower link structure increase CTR, revenue?", "will that outlink hurt me? help?", "what's the most important ranking factor?" etc. that obvious.

I must be a klutz.

Oh and do you think years of experience as a tailor will help one make good suits? Every customer is a different size ...

There is more than one company selling stuff for halloween. The top spot on Google gets 85% of the entire SE traffic (say). Remind me why one guy selling crappy plastic tridents, witch masks and pumpkin shaped buckets deserves to get all that traffic and the other guys don't?

And the author of the post misses that completely. He seems to think that web designers and web developers can ensure a proper SE ranking, which is ridiculous. Given the above, the best SEO specialist is someone that can rewrite/expand your content. Make sure the right keywords are dropped in the text, that the content is reachable for the SE and that there is plenty of content available.