I have search engine optimized websites for local pizza restaurants, law firms, and electronics manufacturers, just to name a few. This means I am skilled in “pizza SEO” “lawyer SEO” and “electronics manufacturer SEO”, right?
No, because those aren’t even things. SEO’s core fundamentals don’t change, regardless of industry.
However, as a marketer, I completely understand why all these different “types” of SEO exist: To target specific types of clients where there is usually more to be gained financially from said clients. Specifically, certain types of clients require significantly more work than others. With more work, comes more pay. I’m familiar with agencies that specialize in ecommerce site SEO because literally hundreds of thousands of pages need work in some cases. A team of multiple SEO specialists is needed.
Things like geographic target, page count, and competitor volume are just a few reasons why one client may differentiate greatly in workload from another.
Alternatively, SEOs target specific industries as a way to set themselves apart by being niche specific. Why be just a plain old boring SEO when you can be a “furniture SEO” who works solely with clients that sell furniture? If anything, it’s an effective way to cull the competition rather than compete with every SEO in the whole world for clients of all type. Regardless, the SEO core fundamentals are still the same. SEO process for a page about wooden rocking chairs is the same process as it is for a page about diesel engines.
However, to be fair, there are SEOs that have years of first hand experience in a certain industry which gives them a notable edge on the content side. You can write more when you know more and textual content is needed for SEO. Keep in mind though, the core SEO process doesn’t change: Keyword research and implementation, site structure, meta tags, fixing page errors, etc. Furthermore, a lot of content on a website doesn’t automatically equal a good rank as covered in a Search Engine Journal SEO article on content with John Mueller of Google back in 2018. The number 1 takeaway is “it’s not enough to just create content”
So, SEO is SEO and the work is exactly the same regardless of the website being worked on?
Not exactly.
SEO work can be broken down into 4 distinct categories based on the goal of the site. In this way, the SEO work that needs to be performed may require a different approach and follow different procedures:
Technical SEO
Technical SEO mainly focuses on technical details. Like the name implies, “technical” or factual and accurate information only. No opinions. Very little creativity. Fixing canonical errors, fixing broken links, and entering information into meta tags are some common examples of the work needed when you perform technical SEO.
Speed optimization though site structure and content management so that a website loads faster is an example of technical SEO.
Using Schema.org markup is another example of technical SEO. This kind of work is done in an attempt to get site links, rich snippits, or knowledge panels to appear in search results.
A company that sells sewing machine parts online complete with individual model numbers is an example of a client that would most likely need technical SEO.
Local SEO
Local SEO’s main goal is to focus on a specific geographical region. This type of SEO is usually done for local businesses that have a limited reach in terms of the service they provide. A pizza restaurant that offers delivery is a good example. In Google, a Google My Business (GMB) page is the key component of local SEO and even by itself, without a website attached to it, a GMB page can be a pretty powerful marketing tool for a local business.
Targeting specific keywords with local identifiers ({city, state}) is another example of Local SEO.
A local mom & pop ice cream shop is a good example of a business that would need local SEO.
Blackhat SEO
Disclaimer: It is not advised to use Blackhat SEO
Search engines have clear guidelines for people looking to rank well. Blackhatters ignore those guidelines and try to get results anyway possible. Google is clearly against link schemes , which are often used in Blackhat SEO. The information is under “Advanced SEO” on Google’s official website which did make me chuckle a little.
Although not illegal by definition, blackhat work can involve breaking the law (i.e. hacking a website) but most blackhatters don’t take things to this extreme and only break website policies instead which is not ethical but also not illegal.
Several years ago, when PageRank (Google’s official rank score per page) was public information, high scoring pages were a target for blackhatters looking for powerful link sources. Combined with blackhat automated link building tools and knowledge about which sites to drop a link on, it was the “Golden Age” for blackhat SEOs. Since PR has been made private and links have been devalued over time, blackhat SEO has only gotten weaker in effectiveness. There are still content spam tactics that are used but these tend to be short-lived sites that quickly get hammered by search engine spam prevention systems.
Getting caught doing blackhat SEO can get you into hot water with Google. A de-ranking or, worse yet, de-indexing can be the punishment in some cases. For this reason, it is not advised to use blackhat SEO on any website you are serious about making successful and stable.
An affiliate marketing site thats sole purpose is to direct web traffic to other companies products or services for monetary incentives is often the type of website that utilize blackhat SEO.
Whitehat SEO (SEO)
When industry professionals and official representatives of search engine giants talk using the term “SEO” what they are referring to is the following:
Adhering to policy guidelines and following new information (from official sources) surrounding algorithm updates to increase search engine ranking.
“Whitehat SEO” is the type of SEO that any professional SEO should be doing moving forward into 2021 if they are serious about this type of work as a career.
If you are doing both technical SEO and local SEO the right way then you are doing whitehat SEO.
If you are adding a nofollow tag to any link pointing to a product that you are reviewing (in exchange for compensation in someway) then you are doing whitehat SEO.
Not buying backlinks? Not doing a link exchange? Only allowing people to naturally link to you over time? Whitehat SEO. There are countless other examples and they all come down to following the guidelines and not trying to cheat the signals with blackhat tactics.
At this point, Google has provided enough transparency with search to give anyone a decent chance at ranking a website for consistant traffic. It’s just a matter of someone putting all this information together and executing it while continuing to stay up to date with whats happening in the world of search engines.
Any credible business, whether online only or brick and mortar, that wants to increase it’s presence in search engines in order to increase it’s revenue is going to want SEO.
Honorable Mentions
Mostly subsets of SEO rather than a stand alone category, here are other variations of SEO that are often singled out:
Greyhat SEO
Can you guess what this means? Yep, a little blackhat and a little whitehat. It’s debatable if this type of SEO is even a thing though since the moment you use blackhat techniques you are conducting blackhat SEO regardless if eveything you did up until that moment was whitehat.
Still, there are those in the SEO community that consider greyhat SEO a type of SEO simply from having both blackhat and white SEO knowledge and experience to execute both so it gets an honorable mention.
Recipe SEO
I recently wrote on recipe SEO on account of a famous celebrity pitmaster recently speaking out about his frustrations with Google when it comes to ranking recipes in Google search. Recipes (if done correctly) can show up as individual knowledge panels at the very top of search results. This mainly involves Schema.org markup so I am tempted to just say that recipe SEO is just an extension of technical SEO, like any SEO work that involves trying to get knowledge panels to appear. There seems to be a lot of focus lately on specifically getting recipes (cooking at home because of COVID-19 maybe?) to rank in Google so it gets an honorable mention.
Hotel SEO
Google offers a special knowledge panel just for hotels. To get your hotel to show up you need to follow a special set of instructions and have an “integration partner” to provide you rates and availability to Google. Like recipe SEO, the work involves a lot of technical information rather than creative content. There is some talk that there is a specific way to have a better chance at ranking a hotel in Google above others but I tend not to entertain theory and have no first hand experience with this so I will just leave this in honorable mentions until I see some proof of this.
Adult SEO
A special kind of SEO just for Porn!? Not really, but, it is required for someone to be of a certain age (depending on their region of the world) to be able to work with adult content in the first place. I’m not an adult entertainment lawyer so I really don’t know the specifics but I do know that different countries have different laws involving adult content online. It’s the only way I would classify “Adult SEO” as a separate category because, outside of any kind of age requirement, the SEO process is the same.
Search Engine Specific SEO (Google/Bing/Yahoo!/YouTube/etc.)
Not all search engines are created equal and, although they all use similar signals, the weight distribution of these signals can be vastly different so you will see different results in different search engines for the same keyword.
Consult the SEO map to determine which which search engine is most used depending on the region in the world.
There are a lot of SEO “flavors.” Just remember that the main ingredients are all the same.