So I analyzed one of my test websites with Chrome LightHouse and I got a 98% overall score consistently. Not to tune my own horn, but It seems that I am a great SEO Guru, right? Well not so fast. Obtaining a 98% overall score is not a great achievement. I have a feeling that every single website in the wild, at some point has obtained almost a perfect score at some point during the initial phase of development.
The real challenge is to achieve a high overall score after you have added to your client’s website all of the bells and whistles that your client is going to require. So let me state a very unlikely scenario when working with on helping a client with their website. And by unlikely I am being sarcastic, of course. So let’s bypass the Project Life Cycle of any project to two Phases for simplicity’s sake.
The Happy Phase After Development
During this phase, the designers are happy, the developers are happy, and the clients are happy. The promise of improving the SEO ranking for the website was achieved, and expectations were surpassed. Testing continues and thinks to go fantastic, no issues here. The website design is approved and ready for production. So we are golden. Let’s go.
Now the client says, this looks great. But one more thing, we need to be able to track not only the page views but the user behavior too. Sure, we just need to implement Google Analitycs 4 (GA4) you suggest. You could suggest a plugin like SiteKit by Google, or Monsterinsights to help you with the implementation, or adding the scripts manually with Google Tag Manager (GTM).
Ok, so you demo the site to your client and prove that the website is doing what it was promised, it looks good, loads relatively fast, and is tracking not only page views, but also user behavior. Great, let’s push the website live.
The Come to Jesus Phase
The website is now live, and everybody is happy. Until your client gets an e-mail from an SEO Expert offering to help improve their SEO ranking on their website. Your client decides that they want to check their SEO ranking again using Chrome LightHouse or another similar tool. And boom, the overall score is all of a sudden down to 70%. Calls are made and conversations turn more confrontational.
So what happened? Why am I getting 70% now? How is this possible nothing has changed? If you have been in the business of website development I am sure that you are familiar with this kind of question. If you have struggled as a developer how to explain to clients what this overall score means, how plugins and content affect the analytics, and how to fix it, you are not alone.
By default, a developer is assumed to be an SEO expert, which in most cases is not accurate. So after several conversations, it is decided that we need to engage an SEO expert to help us.
The SEO Expert
What is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert?
“An SEO expert performs page optimization across a website to ensure search results are relevant and to create a positive user experience, growing website traffic, lead volume and brand awareness.”
(BrainStation)
“An SEO expert (also known as an “SEO specialist”) is someone that optimizes websites in order to achieve higher search engine rankings. Put another way: An SEO expert is someone that knows how to get more traffic from search engines.”
(Google)
As far as I can tell, different definitions of SEO Experts are distinctions without differences. They all focus on improving SEO and providing a good user experience, which is a noble goal. But where I normally find a big void in the SEO experts is the knowledge needed to improve SEO Rankings and the user experience as it relates to your business model, clients, and revenue stream.
Assuming that the SEO Expert is going to understand your business, clients, and revenue stream is frequently a mistake that potential clients often make when contracting SEO Experts. When hiring an SEO Expert only means that you got somebody that they know SEO stuff. The same as hiring a PHP Developer, only means that they know PHP. You are going to have to educate them with the knowledge that you have about your business, clients, and revenue stream.
Failing to do so, will guarantee 100% your dissatisfaction with the SEO Expert’s recommendations. It will feel like you wasted your hard earn income on a bunch of malarkey.
Back to the my 98% Overall Score
Circling back to my “great” score of 98% on my website. It was easy to achieve because I wanted to create a simple website focusing on promoting the services that we provide. It was not intending to provide a mind-blowing presentation with all sorts of media. And my revenue stream is not generated directly by adding merchandise to a shopping cart or serving ads.
If we were to work on a website for a Design Agency and we wanted to feature their work, we would have to add more images and fancy fonts.
If hhe website was an e-commerce website, we would have to add more images to feature products, and scripts to deal with the shopping cart.
If we were to work on a News Agency website, whose revenue is based on serving ads and not subscriptions, we would have to add scripts to deal with those ads.
Finally, If the client wanted to track user behaviors and usage of their websites, we would have to add scripts to track user behavior and events.
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Every other feature that the client wants to add to the website is going to take away from the SEO Ranking and User Experience. There is no way around that. So a website with the exact theme, hosted in the same host provider, and accessed from the exact same computer, and developed by the same team, it could obtain lower SEO scores depending on the amount and type of content that is served.
So,my statement about being an SEO Guru, all of the sudden does not pass the smell test. I, as the client, have decided that in order to obtain a greater SEO Rank and provide a good User Experience, I was going to simplify my website as much as possible.
Final Word
When analyzing the results of a SEO tool, make sure that you use that score as a guideline. Establish a Performance Budget, and compare your results against that budget. Your SEO Expert must understand how your SEO score is affected by adding or removing assets to obtain the best score possible and provide the best user experience based on your needs.
Do not fall for claims about guaranteeing you that your SEO score, your traffic, and your revenue will increase if you hire an SEO Expert. Those claims can only be made after a deep dive into your website, business, clients, and revenue stream by the SEO Expert and your team.
In my opinion, obtaining a great SEO score is a group effort, that starts at the time when the business decides that they need to improve an existing website or create a new website. SEO is often an afterthought, which is a mistake because once the website is coded, making changes to improve SEO could be frustrating for the entire team. But more importantly, very expensive and time-consuming.