He explained:
“I mean, we try to gauge experience by asking them how many years have you been doing this kind of job and how many years have you been in this industry, and how many impressions do you manage a month, roughly? And these are proxy metrics. And as you say, it’s super subjective.”
He mentions the wide range of complexity of technical issues an SEO needs to understand and John Mueller adds that even specialists in a specific SEO niche can have gaps in fundamental SEO concepts. The point of the conversation is to speculate if the root of the disconnect is in Google’s documentation or just that the SEO experts just don’t know.
John commented:
“It’s like someone could be like super focused on web workers or trying to get them indexed and at the same time, like, ‘How do I block a page from being indexed?’”
Martin agreed, saying:
“Yeah. And that’s probably why it is so subjective. And it’s super interesting, super interesting to see how they’re like, ‘Yeah, we got everything nailed down. We are running a tight ship here.’ And then you see, like some of the stuff that is discussed at large in all of the beginner documentation is being missed.
And that left me with a question. Is it that they are not aware that this documentation exists? Is it that they had a hard time fielding the amount of information we put out there? Or is it that they don’t know?”
Lizzi Sassman then asked:
“Did you get a sense, just in conversation with them, if they knew about the documentation or if there was like sort of a, I don’t know, a feeling or a vibe about like that the translation is bad or something like that.”
Martin answered:
“That’s exactly what I don’t know, because we were so busy during the event fielding all the conversations, like everyone wanted to talk to us. And that’s great. That’s fantastic. That’s why we are doing it.
But it doesn’t really give you the space to reflect on things on the spot. So I reflected, basically, on my flight back home, I was like, ‘Hm. I wonder. Dang. I should have asked these questions.’ But, you know, this means we have to go back and ask them again.”
What Is An SEO Expert?
SEO expertise is subjective. Anyone who insists that SEO is one thing is out of touch with the reality that there is no single definition of SEO. I disagree with many SEOs about what they think is a good practice and with more experience some of them eventually come around to agreeing with me. There are some SEOs whose experience is wildly different than mine and I sit humbly and listen to them as they share what they know over dinner.
Many of us work from home but it should be understood that we’re all members of the search marketing community and we should be able to listen to what others say about SEO and not only have polite disagreements about the “right way” but to expect that others will disagree and to not let it polarize you, but rather, keep an open mind.