SEO for dummies

I am new to SEO. I knew that there was something like traffic, that controlled the traffic of the search engines, and my friend who makes websites and has done SEO before for the busyness he works for, and he said it isn't easy; he actually got his businesses' (witch is a ministry) website to number 4 on google. He was telling me that I should try and learn SEO so then he can refer his clients to me.
I just had a few questions:
1. can SEO be learned quickly?
2. Where would I start? Are there good websites to teaching SEO?
3. When would you consider yourself good?
4. And what is CMS, and where can I get it free for macs?

I hope these questions aren't to newbish, thanks.

 

A good SEO blog http://www.nicolasprudhon.com/

When it comes to SEO, you will never know too much, which means learning SEO is a never ending process.

Many SEO tips in this forum alone.

 

I write a blog - http://marketingeasy.net about seo/sem
the best place to start is to read the starter guide form Google - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html

Questions:
1. can SEO be learned quickly?
No, you cant. You can understand the concept quicklyand start applying. But it will take a while.
2. Where would I start? Are there good websites to teaching SEO?
the two below are a good start
3. When would you consider yourself good?
When you do a good job. Too many variables.
4. And what is CMS, and where can I get it free for macs?
What do you mean? CMS are run over browser and not on desktops.

good luck buddy
Lucio Ribeiro
http://internetmarketingacademy.com.au

 

1. can SEO be learned quickly?

You can make a headstart quickly but it takes a lot of experience and experiments before you can be called an expert.

2. Where would I start? Are there good websites to teaching SEO?

You can start following popular blogs: seobook, seomoz etc. You can also see seo faq on sitepoint -

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182915

3. When would you consider yourself good?
That's a difficult question to answer. Most popular SEOs are good at one aspect or another - on page, latent semantics, off page, link baits etc.

There are some who have just read some books got ranked for a really low competition keyword and start calling them experts


4. And what is CMS, and where can I get it free for macs?
I guess you are referring to content management system here. There are many free content management systems that should work on Macs. Checkout Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, PHPNuke, Wordpress (yes it can be used as one). Even wiki software can be used for content management.

 

If you want to learn some seo then read a lot of blog and you must visit forums like this one.

 

1. can SEO be learned quickly?
A. No dear SEO is very deep process you never learn seo any fixed time...every day...you can find something new in seo....it is continues process..

2. Where would I start? Are there good websites to teaching SEO?
A. SEO is open sources you can start learning from online....there are my websites which are provides free tutorial of seo.

3. When would you consider yourself good?
A. Improve your self with practical knowledge you never learn seo from reading ebooks...you must have to do practical on your own websites or blogs

4. And what is CMS, and where can I get it free for macs?
A. CMS means Contain Management System, you can get from blogger....or wordpress...

 

You should start with links building activities like dir submission, links exchange and others

 

1. You can learn quickly some basic SEO. But what counts here is the experience.
2. http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization
3. When you make enough money from your sites.
4. CMS stands for Content Management System. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

Read the entire http://www.seomoz.org site too. It's very good for beginners.