Best SEO Blog|Launch your site.

Does Website structure matter to SEO is a great question that should have been asked about 10 years ago. It’s being answered on many SEO blogs and forums but not in a very formal way, in my opinion.

Website structure helps your search engine optimization in several ways. Let’s take a brief look at how that plays out.

1. Website structure directly influences your site’s crawlability
2. Website structure facilitates or inhibits growth
3. Website structure may improve your on-site optimization
4. Website structure may improve your SERP optimization

Website structure directly influences site crawlability – This point is being made by more people than ever but it seems to be trapped within the thought circles of the SEO community. The difference between a crawlable site and a crawl-inhibiting site structure is most easily measured through cache data freshness. Keep in mind that search engines don’t necessarily recache your page every time they fetch it, but the more often your deep content is recached, the more likely that your site has good crawlability.

Good crawlability ensures that a search engine is most likely to fetch your most important pages more often than others, but also that it’s most likely to fetch a lot of pages rather than just a few. You manage or influence crawl by pointing a lot of links to HTML sitemap pages, embedding links to sibling pages in on-page navigation, and using local hub structures for logical sections of your site.

I generally recommend building at least 3 internal links (from as many different parts of your site) to each page in a complex site.

Website structure facilitates or inhibits growth – If you had to add a new section to your site today, one that is large enough to contain 5 important sub-sections, each loaded with lots of content (pages), what would it take to update your navigation? If you’re thinking, “I’d have to totally rewrite the nav system” then either your navigation has outgrown its usefulness or else you planned poorly for the future.

You should be able to increase the size of your Website by about 30% without having to restructure on-site navigation. This means you won’t severely inhibit crawlability. New sections/content should compensate for their crawl-draining value by adding more internal links to the mix. This is not about passing anchor text to your competitive pages. This is about ensuring that spiders keep finding links to crawl that are deemed important enough to crawl.

If you cannot easily add 30% more content to your site, then you need to start working on a rewrite of the navigation system before you find yourself in crawl crisis mode. It’s broken if you don’t have unused navigational bandwidth, so fix it as soon as possible.

Website structure may improve your on-site navigation – There are four points of optimization that any Web publisher can influence: on-page, on-site, off-site, and SERP. URL structure is an on-site optimization factor, rather than an on-page factor (although most people incorrectly treat it as an on-page factor). Because you may have nested directories, your URL structure may be very complex.

If you believe that search engines pay attention to page URLs (and you should), then your Website structure can be enhanced to help your URLs become more meaningful. You do want to keep them short. You do NOT want to include superfluous sub-directories just for the sake of embedding keywords. You do want to use important, relevant keywords in the page URLs.

Website structure may improve your SERP optimization – I often ask my students, “What is the first thing people see when they look for content on the Web?” Usually no one gets the answer right. It’s the first search results page, not the first Website listed at number 1. What people see on that search results page influences their decision to click through or not click through.

It is possible, for example, to influence people to click on the 2nd result more often than the first, if the 2nd result is clearly more relevant to a query than the 1st result. This happens more often than most people in the SEO industry realize. And keep in mind that “relevance” to a user may be very different from what it seems to be to a search engine.

The user may be looking for a very specific page, and may not be interested in the more algorithmically acceptable content listed above that page. Search engines cannot always deduce what the searchers really want.

Last word on Website structure – There is actually much more to be said about “Website structure” and SEO because, frankly, it goes beyond simple URL construction. You also have to look at page composition factors (are you embedding images, Javascript, iframes, etc.?). And you have to look at how presentation changes from page to page and section to section. Jarring or incongruous transitions may signal some content issues that will impact your search engine optimization.

If you don’t have a consistent page composition structure throughout your site your ability to target keywords and track return on investment for organic SEO is degraded. Uncoordinated page composition usually produces less converting traffic than coordinated page composition.

You need to look at things like percentage breakdowns of page content into boilerplate, injected keywords, original copy, advertising, etc. You also need to look at copy placement, structures used for formatting copy, and even HTML coherency.

Although writing W3C-compliant code is not necessary for search engine optimization, you can ensure your code is not broken by passing compliance tests. I think most people in the industry now agree that if nothing else, writing W3C-compliant code eliminates the headache of tracing broken structures that might inadvertently hide some indexable content from search engine parsers.

So the next time someone asks you, “Does Website structure matter to SEO?”, you’re in a position not only to say yes, but also to explain why and how. And that’s a good thing.

There is an interesting discussion going on over an SEO Theory article I wrote in February 2009. Secrets of How to Escape the Link Building Trap Now was a pretty popular article, probably not the least because I openly disclosed one of my link building resources (something I usually advise people not to do).

Let me emphasize that I have many link building methods and resources. I don’t rely on just one method, but in that article I talked about several methods I have used and in particular I sort of reviewed Fantomaster’s 20/10 Links A Day network.

10 Links A Day is a subscription blogging service. You pay for access to a blog network where you can post your articles. The blogs are managed by the network and your articles have to comply with a lengthy list of rules. The software reviews the articles for technical compliance but the network is monitored by people as well.

There are other networks out there, some older than 10 Links A Day, and I cannot offer any reviews of them, although I have found credible, believable “grass roots” or spontaneous reviews in several forums. For all of these networks there are both satisfied and unsatisfied customers. Apparently one of Fantomaster’s former clients is not happy with the service. That happens to most if not all businesses.

Now, if you’re curious about how many of these networks are out there, I don’t know. Here are a few names to look for but I cannot tell you how they work or whether they are a good match for your business. All of these services are mentioned in the comments of the SEO Theory article. Fantomaster specifically recommends to his clients that they not exclusively rely upon any one link building network (he says so in the comments so I don’t mind pointing that out).

• 10 Links A Day
• LinkVana
• 1 Way Links.net
• Firepow
• Backlink Solutions
• Article Underground

The idea behind these services (as well as free article distribution networks like eZineArticles, ArticlesBase, Article City, and other services) is that you contribute unique content to a central repository and in that content you are allowed (somehow) to embed one or more links.

With a subscription blog network your content is posted to 1 blog. With an article distribution service your content is posted to a repository and you extend the right of free redistribution to that service, whose guidelines people are expected to comply with when they republish the articles.

Both methods generate a lot of links for many Websites. Both methods are considered to be “white hat” because you’re publishing original content that is categorized and includes relevant links. You can add press release distribution to this mix as well.

Now, just because Web marketers believe in distributing unique content across the Web doesn’t mean someone won’t object to the practice. Search engines seem to feel this is much preferable to all the sneaky, deceptive practices that are forbidden in their guidelines. But just because a link building method is acceptable to a search engine doesn’t mean it will always work.

And here are several common reasons for why your distributed content may not produce the results you want.

• You pick a service that doesn’t pass value
• You are building links in a competitive namespace
• You use the wrong anchor text
• Your methods of measuring link value are ineffective
• Your content may not be indexed for technical reasons
• You are publishing content in a hyperproductive namespace
• You’re expecting too much from one methodology

Do all link building services pass value? I don’t know. Some services may use “rel=’nofollow’” on their links. Some services may require you to earn the privilege of embedding value-passing links. Be sure to review other people’s content before publishing with any specific service. See whether the links have “rel=’nofollow’”. Find out why they do if that is the case. Don’t just blithely assume everyone will allow your links to pass value.

Can these services be penalized? Sure, any site can be penalized. But I have seen several of these services go to extraordinary lengths (in my opinion) to deal with problem publishers who might threaten the quality of the services. They don’t want to be penalized as that hurts their credibility.

Might these services have “low quality” content? That’s an entirely subjective point of view. However, I think it’s naive to expect any one article from any one of these sites to have much value to pass through a search index’s algorithm. If you’re banking on one article to transform your search experience, you’d be better be the Stephen King of link copy writing.

Your keyword is too competitive That doesn’t mean that he who builds the most links wins, but when everyone is building links for the same keyword, he whose link building is the most effective usually wins. You’ll need a lot of low-value links to match up with a few really, really good links. Generally speaking, links from publishing services whether they are blogs, press releases, or article distributors are going to be relatively low value. That doesn’t make them bad. It just means they are wooden planks, not steel girders.

If you underestimate how intense the competition is, your link building strategy may not be ideal.

You use the wrong anchor text Of course, if you know what your keyword is, you might wonder how that could be the wrong anchor text. Ask yourself this: do all your links have the same anchor text? If so, that is a widely acknowledged signal of low quality. If you’re going to build links as opposed to attract them, you need to build some variety into your linking destinations and your anchor text and the content from which your links point.

Your methods of measuring link value are ineffective There is only one way to measure link effectiveness: when your links make a difference in the search results, you should see the change. If you’re doing this right, then you are separating your link building from on-page SEO (these should not be concurrent processes). Furthermore, if you’re really trying to measure “link value” you’re wasting your time.

All those pretty SEO tools out there that claim to provide you with insight into how valuable linking resources are — they’re worthless. You may see value in the tools but you’re fooling yourself if you think they can tell you whether a search engine sees value in a particular link.

If you’re just using the tools for estimating probable link value, then you’re taking a risk but at least it’s an informed risk. As long as you don’t believe the tool can tell you anything definite, you’re okay.

You cannot measure link value. Ever. Ignore the sales hype and taste the reality: we’re all living in the dark and that means no SEO no matter how popular he may be can tell you how valuable a link is.

Your content may not be indexed for technical reasons I have to admit to being spoiled. When I publish an article I expect to see it come up in various indexes pretty quickly. When that doesn’t happen I usually find that there is a technical glitch somewhere. If the glitch can be fixed, great. But sometimes you end up shooting a blank.

And not all blogs are the same. Some blogs just don’t get indexed as quickly as others. If you’re relying on blog links and you don’t see your blog posts in the search indexes within a day or two, you should reconsider your strategy.

You are publishing content in a hyperproductive namespace Hyperoptimized or hypercompetitive namespaces occur where the leading sites rely on extensive link building. It’s a link war, plain and simple. The search algorithm doesn’t force us into link wars. SEO greed and stupidity force us into link wars.

Hyperproductive namespaces are entirely different. That is, the rate of new content being published in the namespace is so high/fast that the clock is reset every day. I compete in these kinds of namespaces. I hate them. Your links don’t mean squat in the short term because Query Deserves Freshness and certain other algorithmic factors override SEO dependence upon links.

If you see 4-5 new articles in your namespace every day, it’s possibly a hyperproductive space. If you see 20-50 articles every day, it absolutely is a hyperproductive space. Links alone — no matter where you get them — won’t win the competition for you. It’s not all about links.

You’re expecting too much from one methodology The best method for link building is to use as many methods for link building as you can. You need value-passing, traffic-passing, long-lasting links. No one method can guarantee you that kind of consistent quality.

Some link specialists do indeed rely on one or very few link building methods. These people are specialists. They know what they are doing (hopefully) better than a generalist. I’m sure Eric Ward is very good at all sorts of SEO skills, but he’s one of the few link specialists I look up to. The guy knows what he is doing. And he uses a method that has been criticized and ridiculed many times over. He asks people for links.

But you know what? If Eric asked me for a link, I’d probably give it to him. I know he won’t just drop by any random Website, ignore the stern warning on the contact form that says “Don’t ask us for links”, and drop an irrelevant link request.

(HINT: There are ways to ask people like me for links — I’ve written about them, and so has Eric).

Not to push too much business Eric’s way, but my point is that there are people who are just better at this link building stuff than the rest of us. I’m good at link building but I’m not a specialist. And if you need a link from CNN or some big fancy site, I’m not the guy to come to.

When you cannot afford to hire a dedicated link building service that pretty much leaves you with do-it-yourself techniques. I’ve been writing about DIY link building techniques for years. What I’ve always tried to remind people, however, is that no one method or resource works for everyone.

I’m sorry when people who feel disappointed after trying a method or resource express frustration. I have known that frustration myself. But while I encourage people to share their experience with well-known popular resources and methods, I don’t want them to give up.

There is a lot going on in link building that just doesn’t fit into any one comprehensive article (although people like Dave Harry, Ann Smarty, and Wiep probably try to write such articles at least once a month). There are still some good opportunities for building links through social media, although the cost of acquisition may have increased. There are still some good opportunities for building links through forums, although the cost of acquisition may have increased. Etc., etc.

And by “cost of acquisition” I am not talking about buying links. I am talking about what it costs you to obtain value-passing links through those methods. Link building is only cheap for a spammer, and spammers are counting on volume. When you drop 10,000 links a day you can live with only .01% of them passing value. You’ll get more tomorrow — and eventually you’ll have to start over again as your domains get banned or penalized.

This article probably should have been published on SEO Theory but it’s Thanksgiving week (here in the U.S.) and I won’t be working tomorrow or Friday so I wanted to make this the second Best SEO Blog article for this week.

It happens all the time. Google ignores your inbound links. And it happens in many ways. Most people in the SEO community still don’t seem to have got the message, though.

Why is it that Google ignores inbound links? Isn’t SEO all about links? Of course not.

The question implied by the expression “google ignoring my inbound links” might be better phrased as: “Why does my link building suck?”

If you were to ask someone like Rand Fishkin whether links influence search results, he’d be quick to point that indeed they do influence search results. He’d also be in a position to point you to many articles about link building that he and others have written through the years.

And if you’ve ever looked at the backlink profile for SEOmoz then you’d probably reasonably conclude that Rand has done a good job of building links. Go ahead. Conclude that. I know I have.

But here’s the rub: How do you sort out the value-passing links from the non-value-passing links? No one knows.

What we can be pretty sure of is that anyone who feels compelled enough to ask “why is google ignoring my inbound links” probably either has the wrong SEO strategy (too much dependence upon links) or the wrong links. Let’s take a look at both issues.

Depending on links is bad SEO – Why? Because links provide you with only limited points of relevance. A typical link won’t help you chase the long tail of SEO and it is the long tail where new search visibility stars are born. Search engines tell us that they have never seen 20-25% of all queries before. Hence, there won’t be any SEO competition for those queries. If you just happen to develop the right content for a previously unused query, you’ll zoom right to the top when people search on it.

Links don’t do that for you. Why? Because they rarely target previously unused queries. Even so-called “natural” links often use anchor text that has been used many times before.

Now, you might say you’re trying to be competitive and therefore you need links for existing queries. Sure, that makes sense. But if you’re only trying to compete on the basis of links, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage compared to anyone who wants to do SEO the right way.

You just get the wrong links is a very common problem in SEO. But it’s not as simple as that. It’s very easy to acquire links today that to all observers seem perfectly reasonable and acceptable and learn only a month later that the search engines have revised their guidelines — or that the linking sites have turned on “rel=’nofollow’”.

In most cases, you’re not obtaining “illegal” or “morally unacceptable” links, you’re just getting the wrong links. Every link has a life expectancy and the value associated with that link has a life expectancy. In SEO terms we should be more interested in the life expectancy of link value. Many sites do now routinely add “rel=’nofollow’” to their user-contributed links.

Too many SEOs have drunk of the social media wine and having become drunk with that wine they ran out and obtained all the social media links they could. Those links have the bad habit of vanishing quickly when accounts are banned, services collapse, or service providers change the way they link out. Furthermore, when a search engine devalues a whole new class of links there are ripple effects that sweep across the indexed Web.

It’s not easy to find good linking resources and you’re not as likely to find them in popular SEO blogs and forums as by accident. Why? Because when enough SEO people gang up on a linking resource they usually ruin it for everyone.

You may just need to do better linking resource research, depending less on what you find in SEO forums and blogs and more on what you find by yourself. You won’t find any “secret” resources, but you need to keep the resources you use a secret from other SEOs as much as can be reasonably expected.

Google doesn’t want to ignore your inbound links. It just wants to ignore links that should not be passing value. The same is true for all search engines, but each search engine has its own criteria for determining how to value links.

And that leads to my final point: You cannot use outside tools to peek over a search engine’s shoulder. No matter how many people tell you to use link research tools, DON’T — not for finding good sources of links. Those tools cannot tell you if the links they know about are indexed in or valued by any particular search engine.

Do more domains help SEO? That’s a good question. The answer is “42″. Next?

Frankly, I should think this question would have been laid to rest in the various SEO forums by now where many people have shared the following responses (and I summarize):

• YES!
• NO!

Seems pretty clear to me. How about you?

Here is the thing about asking questions like “do more domains help SEO?” They don’t mean anything. People inevitably, if they actually take the time to think about the question, will ask what your intent is.

What sort of help are you looking for with your SEO? Do more domains help with keyword research? Do more domains help with link diversity? Do more domains help with building a query space? Do more domains help with search reputation management? Do more domains help you tackle more keywords? Do more domains help improve search conversions? Do more domains help you learn more about SEO?

The answers to all these questions can be boiled down to:

• YES!
• NO!

There is plenty of reason to create multiple domains for SEO — but we’re dealing with a classic 80/20 situation, in my opinion. For every 20 reasons you can think of to build multiple domains for SEO, I would wager there are 80 reasons NOT to.

For one thing, you can do virtually everything with one domain that you would probably want to do with multiple domains, except build links. And I think all the best link builders in the industry would tell you that creating domains for the sake of building links is about as dumb an idea as one may come up with.

I’ve often said that link building (in the absence of doing anything else) is the least efficient approach to optimizing for search. Well, if we’re going to bank on link building, building domains for links is the least efficient approach to link building. That’s about as low an ROI methodology as I can think of.

I’d rather send out emails asking people for links than build domains for them. That’s crazy talk, in my book.

So why do people keep asking “do more domains help SEO”? There has to be more to it than just that? In other words, when you’re searching for help with your SEO, be more specific with your questions. About the most specific advice I or anyone in the industry can give to someone asking if more domains help with SEO is that they do and they don’t.

If you’re only concerned with building links, you have much to learn about doing SEO the right way. I suggest you visit SEO Theory to learn about SEO. That’s a pretty good resource in my opinion (if I may say so myself).

If you’re concerned about more than just building links, then the 20 good reasons for building multiple domains for SEO are based on value to the consumer/reader. The more value you provide to your visitors through your site, the better your return on investment tends to be.

So the justification for creating multiple domains is that you can do things (for your visitors) with multiple domains that would not make sense to do with just one site. I can give you a few specific examples, but these are not an exhaustive list.

Why use multiple domains for SEO

• You’re targeting totally unrelated keywords and markets
• You’re implementing a new Web technology that requires a completely different site structure
• You’re creating a sub-brand that may be spun off (as a business or product/service)
• You’re partnering with someone else and want to retain control over your core site

Unrelated keywords and markets may be language or country-focused, but they can be product or service-focused. Many companies successfully manage their Web presences through brand-specific Websites. But it does require extra effort.

New Web technologies may require resources you have not allocated to your core site and you don’t want to replace a successful site design or structure. Many organizations do this. It’s a perfectly good reason because isolating the new project on its own site ensures the developer has the freedom to do what is necessary without putting previous Web resource investment at risk.

Leveraging sub-brand value for the future is not the same thing as being speculative. It’s about having a plan where you know you intend to make certain things happen and that plan calls for a Website that is not weighed down by dependencies on the corporate brand.

Partnering with other people is often best served by creating multiple domains so that all the partners retain some control over their personal/corporate brand visibility.

These are common sense reasons to use multiple domains for SEO. They are practical, pragmatic, and conservative reasons, too. In my opinion, the less conservative (or more risky) your reason for creating multiple Websites, the less value there is (from a search optimization perspective) in creating multiple Websites.

You want to manage your time and resources efficiently.

You want to manage your risks.

You want to manage your return on investment.

Those are three key tests you should apply to any SEO idea. If you cannot justify doing something on at least 2 out of 3 of those tests, then it’s probably not worth doing.

So, do more domains help SEO? You’ll have to be the judge of that. You really won’t find the best answer on the Web, no matter how convincing the arguments for or against may seem to you.

When I was a younger person I studied computer programming (before I got to study computer science). In the programming world (back then) you had Junior Programmers, Computer Programmers, Programmer Analysts, and Systems Analysts. You also had team leaders and project leaders and vice presidents and people running around who were important but they didn’t have titles.

I felt a bit like the kid asking the Wise Owl how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop. The Owl figured out it was three but I’m afraid that didn’t work in the programming world.

I started out as a Junior Programmer because I had a diploma from an 18-month Technical School. That was 18 months of hands-on programming, 5 days a week, 5 hours a day (not counting homework and so). By the time I graduated from Tech School I had more programming experience than any 4 year degree college graduate. They would start out at twice the salary as me and they were called Computer Programmers.

The fact that I could write cleaner code faster than the college grads — a fact they acknowledged — didn’t matter in the corporate scale of things. The Wise Owl said I was a Junior Programmer and that was that. I was quite a bargain for any company that hired me and now, many decades later, I’m not surprised at how easy it was for me to get a job in those days. And then came the Carter-Reagan Recession of 1980, so I decided to go to college and get that 4 year degree so that I could become a Real Computer Programmer.

In all the years that I worked in the software industry I never made it to the level of Systems Analyst, although admittedly by the time I became a Branch Data Processing Manager, Programming Manager, and Asst. Director of IT (for different companies) the title of Systems Analyst was probably a bit beneath my stations. Maybe I just needed to work in an IBM shop or something for twelve years. I dunno. I never met a real live Systems Analyst except maybe when I interviewed for a job with EDS (the company Ross Perot founded and later sold off to General Motors).

Today I would be surprised if I could get a job as a Computer Programmer, much less a Programmer Analyst. My knowledge of programming is ancient. I don’t use the new-fangled languages that kids in their 30s have grown used to and I’m not sure what the babies in their 20s are being introduced to. Does anyone actually write real computer programs any more?

So what’s my point and what does all this have to do with “how to be a good SEO analyst”?

Well, search engine optimization is not as strictly tiered as computer programming can be. In theory (and sometimes in practice), the Systems Analyst would look at a problem, design a solution, and either hand it to a team of Computer Programmers (and Junior Programmers) or ask a Programmer Analyst to engineer the solution. The chief difference between a Programmer Analyst and a Computer Programmer (I was told) was that the Programmer Analyst just needed to know what the problem was and how the desired solution should look. The Computer Programmer was expected to work as part of a team, following a specification written by the Systems Analyst and the team leader.

The Junior Programmers were usually relegated to the world of writing Inventory and Sales Analysis reports, which were about as harmless a task as you could give an inexperienced programmer who needed not only a detailed spec but constant supervision to make sure he was just READing the data and not WRITEing it.

Do we even have Junior SEO Technicians? We have SEO trainees, who are often handed a full project and told to get to work. 4 year degrees don’t get you much of a salary boost in this industry as far as I am concerned, although telling me you took so-and-so’s SEO course may cause me to knock some numbers off the offer I contemplate making you.

Since we lack the tiered structure of programming, we don’t really have an analytical/specification model. That is, I don’t know what an SEO analyst is, except that an SEO is expected to be an analyst. Perhaps the people who want to know how to be a good SEO analyst are just being redundant in their unnecessarily repetitive language. Or perhaps someone somewhere who doesn’t know what they are talking about got angry at the SEO team and chewed people out for not being “good SEO analysts”.

You can have an SEO technician or six. You can have an SEO manager. You can have team leaders. You can have SEO strategists. You can have Directors of Search Marketing, Directors of Search Strategies, and Directors of Stuff So Secret Nobody Talks About It. But in my mind they all have to be analysts.

A good SEO technician has to be able to do keyword research. I’m not asking for perfect keyword research. Just find some relevant keywords that people search on and figure out where to put the relevant copy (and, if needed, supporting links).

A good SEO technician has to be able to set up and watch the metrics. The metrics tell you where the referrals are coming from, where the conversions are, and where the best performing keywords are. You enhance or replace your earlier keyword research based on what the metrics tell you.

A good SEO technician should be able to do minimal competitive intelligence. Too much competitive intelligence in this industry is pretty much BS. All you need to be able to do is look at the SERPs and decide (more or less correctly) that people ARE or ARE NOT optimizing for them. That’s good competitive intelligence.

That’s all done at the SEO tech level. SEO managers and team leaders need to make sure people are doing their jobs and that the bogus deadlines don’t kill the work. SEO managers and team leaders need to do the internal reporting that ensures people who don’t know what they are talking about think they are improving the situation by approving reports that have been dumbed down for them.

Search strategists — okay, they get to do the sexy stuff like setting up hundreds of Websites and watching which ones fail and which ones hang around long enough to possibly be useful. Search strategists get to read all the SEO blogs, watch all the SEO videos, and shake their heads at how many people really believed PageRank Sculpting was going to be the miracle cure for Lack-of-Intelligence. You need a lot of intestinal fortitude to be an SEO strategist because of all the crap you’re forced to digest.

Maybe there are companies out there that have actual SEO Analyst positions. If that’s the case, I’m not the person to tell you what those guys are supposed to be analyzing that everyone else on the team shouldn’t be analyzing. You cannot do good SEO without doing good analysis. But every SEO must be doing SOME analysis. Otherwise you’re not optimizing for search. Maybe you’re writing copy or designing Websites or placing links, but without the analysis you’re not doing SEO.

So, to me, you will be a good SEO analyst when you are a good SEO. Plain and simple.