SEO & Digital Marketing are things I often get asked about. Mostly, 'do you do it?'. Some people find it odd when my answer to that is 'no'. So let me explain why this is the case.

I am a website designer and website developer. It has taken me over a decade to get to the skill level that I have. As I am sure you can imagine, these are fields that are constantly evolving. When I started building websites, my sites were generally 800 pixels wide, tested on Internet Explorer on a desktop computer and if it needed to do something fancy, Flash was the weapon of choice (personally I miss using Flash, it was a lot of fun!). Nowadays my websites normally take up the full width of the screen, they are responsive so they work on your old iPhone (320 pixels wide), a tablet (768 - 1024 pixels), laptops (1366 - 1440ish) and large desktops (1920 - 2560). All breakpoints between these widths are tested, because quite frankly I don't know what size screen the next new Phone or Tablet is going to have, so I need to make sure that your website looks pretty darn good no matter what the tech manufacturers throw our way.

Not only is your site tested at many different widths, it needs to be tested in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari and unfortunately old versions of Internet Explorer for some clients. It needs testing in both desktop browsers and mobile ones. It should be tested for accessibility, to make sure people with vision problems can use a screen reader, people with epilepsy won't be triggered by too much movement, colour blind people can tell the difference between hover states and people with physical disabilities can navigate using a keyboard etc.

Want me to do something fancy? Well I might do that with some CSS and SVG animations, or perhaps we will go with javascript, depending on what we need to do and what will be the most efficient way of doing it. But what was great to use last year is probably obsolete now, so I need to figure out what the current 'best practice' is. Most days before and after my normal work time, I spend a large chunk of time just reading articles about all the new things we can do on the web, just to keep my head in the loop of what might be the next big thing.

When I started building websites they were simple, so long as it looked good (well that is debatable in hindsight...) that is pretty much all it needed to be. There was not much talk of SEO and Digital Marketing, social media was only just beginning, UX and UI were unheard of. Now there are so many elements that go into making a great website. 

SEO & Digital Marketing are a whole other field, and a very competitive one at that. Like web development, it takes years to master your craft and it is constantly evolving. Google's ranking algorithm changes regularly and your competitors actions change too, so you need to account for that. For me to do your SEO & Digital Marketing, as well as design and build your website would be too much work for one individual. Being perfectly honest I feel that if any one person is advertising they do the whole lot (as an individual, not a business) then they possibly are not doing any aspect justice, or they may be outsourcing some of the work.

I prefer to work with specialists in SEO and Digital Marketing in Perth and Sydney, and can refer you to different people depending on the size of your business and budget. I will only ever refer you to an Australian based expert as they know the local market and I prefer to support Australian businesses. If you want to find out more about my preferred SEO and Digital Marketing agencies, please get in touch.

And a parting word of advice - if anyone offers to 'guarantee' your search engine rankings, please put your credit card away, and run. No one can or should be 'guaranteeing' your rankings, there are too many factors outside of their control to actually do this.