What is a good SEO

SEO is a pretty young science. And I didn’t find a way to measure the work of a SEO. Everybody can call himself a SEO guru and claim to work for some very well ranking companies (but you can’t name them because it’s secret). I’m doing it myself and am SEO consultant. I’ll never be called a SEO guru. I’m only working part time on my SEO and only with solid knowledge, nothing special or groundbraking. I think basic SEO is pretty easy to learn and you can gather experience very quick. For most sites it’s well enough and you can succeed for some niches and long tail keywords pretty fast without that much effort. But if I was head of the PartyPoker SEO team or something like that it’s a very tough business. Because small losses in search engines can mean millions of losses in profit. And you have to put much more work in it. That’s not something I’m looking for.

But if everybody can consider himself a SEO: what is a good SEO? Can you simple measure it with keyword rankings? Is a SEO good if he ranks well for terms like poker or online poker or can a SEO also be good if he ranks first for long tail keywords and getting 50 uniques/day through Google.

I think that it’s a tough question. Certainly a SEO who ranks very well for highly competitive keywords MUST be a good SEO. He can be lucky but not with these tough keywords. If some sites rank well for certain niche keywords, it can be luck. If you take a look at their sites SEO it sometimes MUST be luck. There’s no simple explaination why some sites rank well. Sometimes you find sites that have a completely different main topic but some dude makes a forum post about the keyword you’re looking for.

You can’t claim that those sites are good in SEO because they rank well for some keywords (although they have no idea why). I think it’s the overall and long term results that distinguish good from bad SEOs. If you have one site that ranks well, you’re not a SEO guru. But if you have ten sites that all rank well for determined keywords you can’t suck at SEO.