SEO Experts: Where did you start?
-
Hi all!
I'm beginning to travel down the road of becoming an SEO expert! I've attended the latest few webinars on Moz, and have started watching the White Board Fridays. However I'm wondering, for the current SEO Experts, how did you get to where you are today?
I.e. What books did you read? Did you pay for classes or just learn everything from Moz? Where is a good place to get an SEO Expert Certification/Is it necessary? How long did it take you to become an expert? (Stuff like that)
I suppose I'm looking to make a list for myself, organizing what I should learn first, and then create a timeline moving forward.
Thanks for your help Mozzers! - Briana B.
-
Read everything, believe half of it, test everything twice whether you believe it or not.
-
Built a small website. Nuthin' happened.
Read about SEO. Tried something. Watched what happened.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened. Rankings dropped. Couldn't remember what I changed.
Started writing stuff down.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened.
Read more about SEO. Tried something else. Watched what happened.
Stopped doing SEO. Instead spent time improving website and writing content. Got better results.
-
Wow - I'll be taking a look at everything you have provided me. Thanks a bunch Ryan!! -Briana B.
-
Hi Briana. Neat question! This could be pretty fascinating as it fills out. Instead of giving you a personal history though, I'll go over some of the things I read or used early on that have continued to serve me well into the present. And I'll break these up into two areas: Technical and Classical.
Technical
- DNS and HTTP: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596100575.do You'll likely come across many other O'Reilly books as you study (whether on your own or in a course) as they are classics. The other applicable one to DNS being: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596005627.do Finally, combine that with HTTP (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596005627.do) and whenever you come across discussions on whether or not to structure a site with a third level, cname, a name, 301 redirect, 302... whatever, you'll have a solid foundational understanding of what's at play. I read my first one of these back in 2000 and the information has stuck with me ever since.
- Scripting. Another book reference: Professional Search Engine Optimization with PHP by Jaimie Sirovich and Cristian Darie, Wrox, April 2007. Their site is here: http://www.seoegghead.com/our-seo-book/search-engine-optimization-with-php.seo. While their book is on PHP, having an understanding of any scripting language gives you a core understanding of how much of the content on the web goes from server to browser. Java script being another major one as you'll often interact with it on some level, at the least a code to incorporate tracking via Google Analytics or other services.
- CSS. Firebug is my favorite plug in for messing around with CSS. And really it's all about being able to quickly and easily mess around. Its in-browser highlighting features, css window, flexibility are all favorites for quickly tackling look and feel issues. Having an understanding of CSS also makes any discussions with designers all that much more smooth. In that vein...
- Images. The big technical thing to understand here as far as the web goes is the various file types and how you can accomplish a smaller file that still looks great via formatting in JPG, GIF, or PNG (for the most part). I learned most of this while interacting with Photoshop and using the "Save for Web" feature. In relation to SEO though, the ability for people to share your images goes a long way. Here's how XKCD author Randall Munroe handles it: http://xkcd.com/license.html.
- Bots, Crawlers, and Spiders. Oh my. You can play around with Xenu's Link Sleuth to get a hands-on understanding of the automated web surfers out there as well as reading up on the documentation for Googlebot and others. The big take away is understanding the difference between the previous two bullets and what bots see when they visit your site.
- SEO Tools. You're in a good place for those! With an understanding of all of the above it will really help you to break down what might be a breakdown in the sites you're analyzing. Moz's guides are excellent reading, along with what you've mentioned doing already. Same goes for things like Google Webmaster Tools, and Google Analytics. GA deserves its own mention under UX, so...
- UX. When you can get a handle on UX you're at the finish line of optimization, but ready for another lap most likely! If you're site is up (first two bullets), loading quickly and looking nice (second two bullets), indexed (fifth), and ranking well (sixth), knowing how your visitors are interacting with your site and moving towards goals or conversions is key. Being able to work with Analytics (Google or another) is key. Thankfully there are whole schools dedicated to this: https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/explorer and http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/index.html.
Classical
- Marketing. In regards to the SEO space it's been neat to see how Moz has matured and how the space as a whole better and more conventionally intersects with classical fundamentals of marketing. Having technical proficiency in the things listed above is one thing, but being able to combine them fluidly with core marketing principals is another. Avinash Kaushik is an excellent example of combining technical proficiency with marketing common sense. His "about" page and blog roll are filled with others who do both well.
- Sales. If you have the opportunity at some point, definitely work as closely as possible with a sales team. Especially the ones that crush it on a regular basis. Ask them what they want in terms of leads. What would their perfect lead be? How do they use the website currently? When you begin connecting the dots from search to visit to sale you're at the top of your class. Conversion Rate Experts are a great example and their story is pretty instructive.
- MBA. If you're going to take the plunge in education and are going for a corporate setting, an MBA from well-regarded institution still goes a long way. By no means a requirement for success in the field (too many examples to list) it still has its place in many people's timeline.
- Conscientious. Look at any timeline and the ones that see the most growth and success--often despite blunders, mistakes, and tangents along the way--are the people that interact with others in a healthy, patient and kind way. If you come across some one who is the opposite of this let the go along their own way and keep on your own path. You might turn down work because of it from time to time, but you'll have the reserves to find more and continue onward if you do.
Those are some top of mind highlights. Best wishes for your success!
-
Hi there,
Try reading this first http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Also try reading about Google updates on Search Engine Land website, as well as Moz of course. 3 months old SEO knowledge might be outdated because of changes happening to Google through their updates, mainly Google Panda and Penguin.
Also follow some of the big names on Twitter and keep an eye on relevant tweets.
I hope this helps
Issa
-
Anytime
-
Thanks for your advice!
-
Moz has a great section called Learn. I started with blogs like that, and then used Google to look up other forums or topics related to what they had in this section. So, if I read the section on URL formats, I would go to Google and search "best url format for SEO" and read whatever else came up. There are a lot of places that are like Moz, and I think I learned the most from the sites that disagreed with what I found here. It gave me the opportunity to see two sides of the argument and then make an educated decision as to which practice actually was the best practice. 99.9% of the time, what I found in the Learn section of Moz was completely accurate.
I became interested in SEO when I was working for a company that completely got hosed by a firm. Taking what they told us, I just started looking to verify what they were doing because we couldn't see any results.
Take things one step at a time. Start at the beginning with on page optimization and content. Once you feel like you are comfortable with the basics look into off page optimization and social media. Keeping an open mind is essential, this industry is fluid. You will always be able to find more than one way to do something. Learn to trust your gut and always ask yourself if what you are doing is natural and organic. If you are keeping things natural and organic more often than not you are using best practices.
Reading the Q&A forum here is really beneficial as well. I have been working in SEO and PPC for 6 years, and I still learn something new from community members everyday. There is always a new method or GA or GWT update that can change how you use your data, or restricts your data. The people in the community are very much on top of changes in the industry and can give you insight to methodology and best practices.
There are many other community forums, like searchengineland.com. Use every resource you can. I think of Moz as my ground. If I find something out there in cyber space that I find interesting or new, I validate it here.
Welcome to the community and good luck to you!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO QA automation of large websites
Can you share your experiences in managing SEO QA automation of large websites with millions of pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | terentyev
what are the things you are regularly testing for, besides the most obvious - hreflangs/canonicals, robots.txt, sitemap, non-200 status codes, redirect rules?
do you use in-house developed tools or external tools?
if external - which ones?
how do you run your QA automation scripts? external server or some online tools? upon every release or hourly/daily/monthly?0 -
Dealing with negative SEO
Interested to know people strategies for detecting and mitigating negative SEO. Previously I've used link monitoring tool and kept an eye on all new back links coming in to any page on the site. I have then manually assessed each one again using some tools and actually visiting the website. However, this always leaves me with one dilemma. Regardless of my assessment how do search engines see that link? I run three lists a white list, grey list and blacklist. White list - very relevant and have a lot of authority. I.e. leading industry blogs and forums. Grey list - out of topic/industry, directories Blacklist - sites de-indexed by Google, illegal content or absolute spam (i.e. one page filled with hundreds of links to different domains) Do you have any thoughts? How do you assess if link is bad?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Looking for SEO advice on Negative SEO attack. Technical SEO
please see this link https://www.dropbox.com/s/thgy57zmmwzodcp/Screenshot 2016-05-31 13.25.23.png?dl=0 you can see my domain is getting tons of chinese spam. I have 410'd the page but it still keeps coming.. 7tnawRV
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattguitar990 -
SEO Indexing issues
Hi, We have been submitting sitemaps on a weekly basis for couple of months now and only 40% of the submitted pages are indexed each time. Whether on the design , content or technical side, the website doesn't violate google guidelines.Can someone help me find the issue? website: http://goo.gl/QN5CevThanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZeFan0 -
Do Page Anchors Affect SEO?
Hi everyone, I've been researching for the past hour and I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere! Can someone tell me if page anchors affect SEO at all? I have a client that has 9 page anchors on one landing page on their website - which means if you were to scroll through their website, the page is really really long! I always thought that by using page anchors instead of sending users through to a dedicated landing page, ranking for those keywords makes it harder because a search spider will read all the content on that landing page and not know how to rank for individual keywords? Am I wrong? The client in particular sells furniture, so on their landing page they have page anchors that jump the user down to "tables" or "chairs" or "lighting" for example. You can then click on one of the product images listed in that section of the page anchor and go through to an individual product page. Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
SEO for bigcommerce site
I have a site on bigcommerce platform .from Where do i need start SEO for these types of ecommerce sites.Looking for Experts ideas . Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Ugh...getting organized with my SEO
One thing I have learned about SEO is that it takes a patient, organized and task oriented person in order to be a good SEO'r. Luckily I have these skills which I think helps me with my own personal SEO, but at the same time I have other personality traits that work against me at the same time which can distract me from staying on track. I am a goal oriented person - I like to create weekly, monthly and yearly goals to help keep me focused. I am a patient person I am a task oriented person - I can repeat a task over and over again even if I hate it. I am very organized - I am a better house keeper than my wife (which drivers her crazy) but at the same time I have some other personality traits that work against me which counter act against my strong points. I can't leave a task undone and I have to complete it immediately I am a multi tasker - I can do 20 things at once. The struggle I have is even though I set goals, complete them and have the patience to do them at the same time I tend to work on things and won't move on until they are done. Even though their importance may not be as pressing an other areas. For instance I will work on getting rid of Google errors (404's), fixing code issues with the site people report instead of taking the time to work on the bigger things like fixing issues which effected me from Panda and Penguin. I get stuck on these smaller tasks since I know I can complete them faster, but they never seem to end. I would love to hear other models SEO'r use to help them organize their time management and spreading the tasks across the board and get everything done.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cbielich0 -
Is this Negative SEO?
Hello Everyone, I have just spent the past 9 months designing, engineering, and manufacturing our first product. We just opened our web store and started selling product. http://miveu.com. I have spent zero time doing any kind of SEO. We haven't even put up a sitemap yet or any redirects. I'm just now starting to take a look at things. As soon as I start digging, I find that it appears that someone is at least attempting to do some kind of negative SEO against us. It seems to have started about a month ago. Check this out. https://www.google.com/search?q=miveu&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-beta#q=miveu&hl=en&client=firefox-beta&hs=bo2&tbo=1&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:d&sa=X&psj=1&ei=AGgBUJfJNK650QHW8YW-Bw&ved=0CE0QpwUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=335379d2f3ac2208&biw=993&bih=637 At first I was thinking this isn't so good, but it seems they are just trying to build crap content about our keywords and make it relevant to us. After taking a closer look, I'm thinking maybe this isn't all bad. They have targeted all of our exiting YouTube videos and created new videos that use all of our keywords, titles, people, etc in an effort to make our existing videos irrelevant. They have have also done the same thing with articles that were written about us, awards we have won as well as started negative campaigns about us and people who have said good things about us. Here are my thoughts. While the content is really crappy, it seems like they are actually building keyword relevance to us and our products. They have all the right keywords, the content is just crappy. "There is no such thing as bad press". I don't know if anyone has ever said this before, but I'm going to refer to their effort as "White-Hate SEO" because it doesn't appear to be a real dark effort. Am I missing something here, am I way off base? My bigger worry is that their campaign may include some much darker efforts that I just haven't found yet. I'm pretty sure I know who is responsible for this. They have made it clear that they really do hate us. Frankly, I'm not interested in retaliation, I just want to get my own house in order with some good old-school whit-hat SEO. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dmac
David0