SEO and the average webmaster

 It took me the better part of the day to decide how I felt when a fellow webmaster asked if I had been contacted by the IT department about an SEO plan for the website/s that I maintain.

At first, it was, NO — they didn’t contact me! What? Am I doing something wrong?!?! What did they say? Are they going to make us start all over from scratch? Is there going to be a huge meeting? Are they just pegging one site at a time? Am I next?!?

Then my co-worker comes to visit me, and gives me a copy of what the IT department gave her. A simple checklist of the following:

Then I took a breath. I’ve already been implementing everything on the list.

But then it occured to me that other webmasters of the same entity that I work for do not implement those things. In fact, my co-worker had a reason why she didn’t like using the H1 and H2 tags — they make her page look funny. I told her that I was the same way — but forced myself to utilize CSS to make my H1 and H2 elements look decent.

I admit it. I did not go to school for my profession. I have a several certificates of course completion under my belt — but most of those classes were very basic for me — aka “boring”. More times than naught I usually coached the person next to me, who was struggling to keep up with the lesson. 

How many times over the past couple years have I felt that I’m not doing enough — I could be doing better — I really ought to go to school for webdesign… many times. I have not updated this site as often as I’d like to, and I’ve also turned down potential projects and clients — more for the reason of lack of time, but also for the lack of confidence.

I want to get a degree, don’t get me wrong. However, I also happen to be in the job that I would be striving for even if I did have a degree. Sure, I’m probably paid less than someone with a degree — but I also don’t have the $$,$$$ worth of school loan debt.

So, today was an ego-boost for me.

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But it should also hold as a reminder — obviously my daily trolling of web designing blogs and websites does some good! Consider that my personal investment of Continuing Education. I’m an avid reader of http://boagworld.com/, http://www.designm.ag/, http://www.smashingmagazine.com/, http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/ and more. There are hundreds of wonderful resources out there — of experienced voices, willing to share their knowledge.

I realize that there are webmasters out there who don’t read these valuable sources. Some of these webmasters have degrees, I’m sure of it. And if it weren’t for these sources, I guarantee you 100% that I would not have had the knowledge to implement the above mentioned SEO guidelines, and would have rightly been freaking out over doing my metatags and H1 headers all over again on the websites I work on.

So, I continue on. And I feel fine.