A recent EI post starts with this quote:

"..they would consider the benefits of training up someone in-house to manage the ongoing SEO effort.
It is not, as some would have you believe, rocket science."

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Standard SEO methodologies aren't particularly complicated, on the contrary they can appear deceptively simple, just look at the number of designers who now offer SEO :-)

The complexities come from knowing where the various red lines are and how to deal with them, and since the SEs do their best to obfuscate them, it's not something you'll pick up in an afternoon.

Might be easier if SEO WAS rocket science, at least then it would be clear and precise :-)

Hmmm, I'm inclined to both agree and disagree.

There's certainly a science behind SEO's more minute details and it's probably something you could learn about forever without ever knowing everything that there is to know - particularly as the algorithms, rules and goalposts change all the time.

Having said this, you can learn as much as most people need to know in a fairly short period of time, IMO. Particularly if you already have a good understanding of Web design and/or development.

A lot of SEO's try to convince people that they're masters of some kind of black art that the rest of us don't get and that there's no way we could encroach on their precious ground. But the truth of the matter is that SEO, for the most part, is just an extension of Web design/development, with an additional knowledge of how SE's work. And 2% of the knowledge makes up for 98% of the effectiveness of a good SEO campaign. You can learn loads, you just don't need to.

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"You can learn loads, you just don't need to."

It's the difference between an SEO and someone "doing" SEO :-)

Yes but when the results are effectively the same, who cares? That's kind of my point!

It must be little comfort for SEO's to know that most designers/developers can learn to do what SEO's do (as much as they would ever need to) in a very short period of time.

Sure you can go the extra mile and be a "real SEO" but once you get to that point, you're generally just kind of gaming the SE's for your clients and polluting the SERP's. Remember, not everyone using Google is necessarily looking to buy something. I would say that most of the time they're just looking for information - and not necessarily on companies or products either.

I'm not putting SEO down. It has its value. I just think that it should be blended into the Web design/development mix and not necessarily seen as a specialist, niche skill. In some cases it is and a small number of companies have big budgets for gaming the SE's (unfortunately). What happened to people coming into the industry and working hard on their Web design and development skills? While I appreciate that there are a few knowledgeable guys working in SEO out there, I can't help but feel that the overwhelming majority are just FUD-merchants.

SEO, done properly and responsibly, simply isn't complicated.

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"It must be little comfort for SEO's to know that most designers/developers can learn to do what SEO's do (as much as they would ever need to) in a very short period of time."

In as much as you'd see a template re-seller as a fully fledged web-dev :-)

No, not at all actually. But it's a good comparison to help make my point.

The difference between a template reseller and a full, professional Web design and development service is absolutely huge. Whereas the difference between a 'professional SEO' service and the service that could be offered by a designer with a decent amount of white hat and off-site SEO knowledge isn't huge.

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"Whereas the difference between a 'professional SEO' service and the service that could be offered by a designer with a decent amount of white hat and off-site SEO knowledge isn't huge."

It depends entirely on the competence of the individual professional or not, to quote myself :-)

"The object of this guide is to show that SEO can in most cases be both simple and straightforward, and by keeping to a few basic rules you can quite successfully do your own and achieve results that are as good as if not better than many paid services."

SEO - Guide Help and Services.

Yeah, I'd agree with you there.

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SEO is not rocket science indeed, as the title says, and anyone with web design developing skills and ftp access could do it, but there are limitations based on knowledge and where how and what.

What I found myself, is that you need a lot of patients and if you don't have it, you can forget about it.

SEO is a skill as anything else and what makes you stand out from the crowd is the little secrets that you discover yourself while doing it, but mostly and basic parts (in some cases) are just enough (depending on the competition) to get you high rankings and are available all over the web.

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The Menace, let's not forget on-page SEO is just half the story, the off-page stuff is equally if not more, important.

Linkage can be a bit of a minefield, and I'd wager that 95% of those offering SEO services wouldn't recognise a "bad neighbourhood" or a "links scheme" if it gave them a **** j** :-)