So I was looking at some connections of my connections on LinkedIn and someone had they they were an "SEO Expert". I've always wondered what exactly an SEO "expert" is. I've done a fair amount of reading on SEO, but wouldn't call myself an "expert". Why? Because it really seems like how search engines index and rank your site is pretty much voodoo. Unless you have worked at Google, MSN, Yahoo!, etc... and are risking lawsuits by breaking confidentiality agreements, you really can't call yourself an SEO "Expert", can you?

Let's face it, SEO isn't brain surgery or even removing an appendix or tonsils. There are best practices, good practices, and bad practices. None of these things aren't freely available to read about on the web (or sit at Borders and look through some books), and how to submit to search engines isn't a mystical secret you need to ask an oracle about.

Before I moved my journal over to this domain (used to be separated at perlguy.com), I had great rankings on Google for 'Perl consulting', 'Perl consultant' and similar things. Always within the top 5. Magic? No. Am I now not showing because of magic? No. I moved the journal here to a 3rd level and believe it's effected my "professional" page. No matter, since I'm employed :-)

But, I still must have done something right because on Yahoo! I still have a high ranking for "perl consultant" (#6 as of writing this), and #3 for "perl consulting", and #8 for "perl resume". For someone who does Perl, and would want to do consulting, that's pretty darn good ranking for those key phrases. I'm sure if I cared enough, I could figure out what happened with my Google rankings and fix it (I think they changed something about 8 months ago, since I saw a lot of sites suddenly lose rankings/index counts they had.. but that's another story). And, for my work I did a Google Sitemap, which brought indexed pages up 100 fold. I certainly wouldn't say I'm an expert for either making the sitemap, nor knowing what it is.

So, how do people think they are an "expert" at SEO? What do they think they know that people who simply spend time reading on SEO practices don't? Anyone know? Anyone out there who calls them self an SEO "Expert" care to say what exactly it is that makes them an "expert"? And, why "expert"? Why not "SEO Professional" and leave it at that?

Now, I'm not saying it's not a valid profession, since it is. People need to keep on top of the changing bits of what search engines are doing. But, an "expert"? Is that even measurable?