How did you become an seo expert ?

well, well well,
very good info and very good posting,
I don't think so anybody will be become expert, Why? b'coz here is lot's of things which seo can do, and I'm always hungry to know other things

 

Thank you Aryans.
With regular practice of SEO and analytic idea any one can become Expert.
The main thing he needs is hungriness to wards knowledge.

 

I couldn't disagree with you more if you are saying that people are doing better listening to you than watching the SERPs, regardless of what niche you decide to watch.

You're just leading the sheep to slaughter if you aren't paying attention to the big boys do their thing on a weekly basis. This game changes fast and you must always learn something new. What better place to learn than the markets where a #1 ranking gets you $10,000 profit per day. I guarantee you there is talent around there.

 

expert seo:- who thinks as google thinks means make the things user friendly.
If user is comfortable with your website search engines also.

Gunakesh Parmar
SEO executive
Grey matter india technologies prv ltd
www.greymatterindia.com

 

SEO is not complicated - yes, it does require very hard work and a lot of effort but it is not rocket science, ok it is not for dummies either i'll admit but make sure to USE proper techniques.. content, meta-all, title, url and then the real social bookmarking stuff... first if your site is relevant for the keyphrases it is after, then work as hard as you can and use relevant blogging/social bookmarking, otpimizing in a logical fashion and in 6 months time there will be obvious shifts and in 12 months your site has a permanent foundation... there will be creativity required at times and it is definitely better to hire someone who has sucessfully done this in the past so that you don't have to spend all day find relevant site to link or relevant blogging sites.
And REMEMBER SEO is the most measurable form of marketing. Clients who know nothing about it can still type the keyphrase in google the want to be on page one for and they will know if it is either there or if it is not!

 

get SEO elite = instant expert

 

You know, if you're going to take the time to attack the members of this forum, at least do so properly - I'm sure the people who come here DO NOT LIKE being called sheep. You may choose to disagree with my position and what I say - that's your right, but at least make sure you're respectful of the people who post here when you do so.

</rant>

Now that I have that out of the way, SEO does not change fast. Yes, there are changes from time to time, but they tend to be glacially slow. I mean, that is unless you like spending all of your time chasing after dirty tricks like third-rate lawyers chase after ambulances looking for their next meal ticket - which I don't - in which case you'll be spending much more of your time chasing after those tricks than building quality Web sites that are accessible and easy to use with well-written quality unique content that people will want to naturally link to.

Unlike many of the "Big Boys" which advocate what essentially amounts to spam and overkill, I instead advocate creating quality Web sites that people will love so much they'd gladly kill their own mothers in order to use again if they were to be deprived of access to said Web sites. Rather than just tossing up a Web site, buying some links, spamming blogs and chasing after .edu and .gov backlinks as if they were mana from Heaven, I instead teach people how to write for their target audience, conduct information architecture and usability audits, write clean minimal semantic and valid code (though the validity of HTML has almost no bearing on SEO from a technical standpoint, it does enhance the user experience, which can in turn lead to more natural quality relevant backlinks) and promote their Web sites to the very people will will be using them so they can drive pre-qualfiied targeted traffic that is ready to buy whatever the site has to offer (whether it's entertainment, a product, service, information, or even joining a community).

Go chase after your SEO tricks that violate the search engines' terms of service if you want. I'll teach people how to build successful Web sites instead (while continuing to build my own at the same time).

And before you or anyone else can spout off with something as STUPID as "those who can, do; those who can't teach" I'd like to introduce you to a few people who'd be VERY offended by such a statement. I'm sure you've heard of a few of them. John Conde, Chris Beasley, Jeffrey Zeldman, Donald Trump, Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin, Mike Cherim, Guy Kawasaki, Molly Holzschlag... these are all people who have become successful by DOING, and then going on to teach others how to do the same. And believe it or not, most of them actually brought about some positive changes to the landscape - both online and offline.

 

That's all well and good but in my opinion it's not really SEO. It's become the definition of SEO by virtue of people using it as such and by Google pushing it, but it's still just writing good content, writing accessible code, etc, with a side effect of ranking. SEO has just become an umbrella term for a set of best practices that already exist outside of "SEO".

This new ultra white hat SEO has also become a virtual place for people to adopt a holier than thou attitude that more easily allows them to knock people who don't abide by the guidelines. But the truth is, it takes much more technical skill to pull black hat stuff off than it does white hat, because after all, white hat is really pretending the search engine doesn't exist. Almost anyone can learn to make good sites for their users and wait for results, but not many people can do something like this.

http://www.bluehatseo.com/delicious-captcha-cracked/

I'm not sure if DP mods will like me linking there so copy and paste.

 

I became an SEO expert by studying forums, blogs and online tutorials. Then I applied what I learned to websites. Now I work full-time for an SEO company and I also optimize my own sites in my spare time.

 

[1] - I'm sure they don't like to be described as murderers either ... it's all just analogies, lose the attitude
[2] - search algo's change slowly? Google updates theirs daily, with major changes coming every few months. Yahoo & MSN will (hopefully) start changing more rapidly as they are way behind the industry leader. Slow perhaps when counting in nanoseconds.
[3] - which is why I say they are sheep being led to the slaughter. Some people here honestly believe this garb.
[4] - As LogicFlux said, that's not SEO. I specifically call it design and you are kidding yourself if you think the viagra "spammers" don't know this stuff like the back of their girl's head. Yet another thing you can learn from watching the SERPs, thanks for helping me prove my point
[5] - I think you have the wrong impression of me, But honestly I don't care. It's my point that people are better watching the rankings than digging around here waiting for you to drop your nuggets of truth. My point is not that BH SEO is the way to go, but learning all aspects of SEO couldn't hurt as long as you keep your morals in tact.
[6] - I disagree with most except Aaron (owner of BlackHatSEO) & to a lesser degree Rand. Notice Mr. Walls actually understands the dark side, rather than turning a deaf ear to it. You would be served well actually listening to his advice.

Why not point people out to the other Shepard's (eer, I mean teachers) of the industry like Shoemoney, Amit Mehta & *Jill Whalen.

* some respect goes to her because High Rankings is exactly where new SEO's should start out, not DP

Couldn't agree more with your statements and I'll be more than happy to post some resourceful links for the good readers of this thread.

BlueHatSEO
- straight to a post that the people here will enjoy, I might keep reading Eli's blog if he were to ever post again .....

Slightly Shady SEO - XMCP looks at the world with his eyes wide open. One can learn a lot from his musings if you can overlook his "shady" ways

Aaron Walls Blog - Years of great posts to rumble through.

 

Hmmm... Ya think?

If you can't beat the blackhatter's, you're not gonna be able to rank on any of the competitive search terms, plain and simple.

Whether BH is "immoral" or not is kind of subjective. What may be a perfectly acceptable method of optimizing or backlink building today could easily get you labeled "blackhat" tomorrow. Just depends.

Thanks for the links, btw.

 

It's the same reason the best computer/network security experts practice hacking on their own systems or are former black hat hackers. If you want to beat a hacker, you basically have to become one. But that doesn't mean you have to start going out and breaking other people's systems.

 

I wear -1 reputation with pride, bring it on ... and yes, my success (and failures) assure me that I do know what I'm talking about.

 

Have you read the Alchemist? SEO is all about doing it. It would be very hard to just tell someone how to do SEO because every site/situation is unique. You just need to spend time working with sites, reading articles (while taking everything with a grain of salt), and finding what works. Then get creative.

 

Interesting... I though only the new members complained (or attempt to cover their complaints) when it comes to negative reputation; also it's an infractionable offence. While reviewing your past posts it hardly shows you know so called "what your talking about". In fact, I didn't see one "helpful" post, instead all I see are attacks and degradations to other community members. When you show some class and attempt to actually help other users than you should expect respect, this is a webmaster community to learn and grow; not pissing grounds about whos better than who.

Now, before you go attacking me like you did Dan Schulz, who is a very helpful and knowledgable member in this community you should ask your self one question..... Should I attempt to discredit someone who runs a search engine optimization knowledge database that recieves backlinks from the below type company....

http://developer.att.com/developer/index.jsp?page=goToMarketArticle&id=24100189

When AT&T starts linking to your SEO knowledge\informational sites then you can come accusing people of their lack of knowledge, until then stick with the bridal and web directories. No pun intended of course, I'm sure you have useful knowledge; try to use it in a more useful manner.

This is a prime example how not to become an SEO expert.

 

Right now i'm going through seo trainee but surely be an expert by the coming Christmas...

 

The search engines exist to deliver the most relevant search results for what a person is looking for. I'm sure we both can agree on that. However, our tactics differ as much as night and day. I guess you could compare it to the Bundy Curse of Upper and Lower Uncton from "Married, With Children" Like the people of Upper and Lower Uncton, who wanted to kill the last surviving male Bundys (Al and Bud) over a curse that was cast upon the family when Al's ancestor, Seamus McBundy, made fun of a fat ugly witch, we want to get our Web sites up to top of the search engines for the terms that we are targeting.

Unlike the people of Lower Uncton however, who wanted to kill the Bundys to lift the curse that had kept their village in perpetual darkness for over four hundred years, or even the people of Upper Uncton, who wanted to kill the Bundys outside of the city limits to preserve the curse, as search engine optimizers (and marketers) we want to ensure that our Web sites reach the top of the search engine listings though for different reasons (white hats tend to make sites for people, while black hats tend to make sites for search engines).

However, it's the tactics that we use which cause us to differ. It's obvious that I prefer the so-called "white hat" (or making Web sites for people) approach, which is why I focus on building quality Web sites with quality content that are easy to find, easy to access and easy to use. You can often tell a "white hat" SEO from a "black/shades of grey hat" SEO in the listings because the Web sites we tend to make are often quality resources with well-written content that other people want to (and do - often) link to. There's no need to chase after myriad algorithm updates (and let's face it, the majority of the algorithm changes don't affect ethical SEO practicioners) the way third-rate lawyers chase after ambulances for their next meal ticket because we focus the majority of our efforts on making Web sites that people (and search engines) love. It's this kind of philosophy that allows people such as ssandecki, sweetfunny, Chris Beasley, and John Conde to be successful (note that these people are also well known for getting to the point and not beating around the bush or trying to BS people).

On the other hand, the Web sites produced by people who make sites for search engines are often hard to find (due to the algorithm changes that constantly counter the tactics these people constantly employ in a patheitc and vain attempt to "beat" the search engines) over long periods of time, they're often inaccessible (come on, tables for layout went out years ago, people DO navigate via the keyboard, and some people simply CANNOT SEE - my own vision sucks as it is, so I have a personal incentive to build my sites the way I do, etc...), their links tend to be manufactured rather than organic (I recently saw a site that had optimized for the search term "magazine subscriptions" by including the search term in almost EVERY SINGLE LINK on its Web site, and then pointed those links to other pages on the site, and the majority of its external links were from low quality directories and forum posts), they're hard to use (where is everything at, why isn't there any consistent navigation, and so on), and the qualityi of the content just happens to be in the same dumpster as a family of raccoons scouraging around for a meal behind the local McDonalds. I don't know about you, but if I come across a site that is hard to use, has poor content, and no real organization, I'm going to leave and look for another site instead - and it turns out the sites I can use are the ones that were made for people, not search engines.

Take the following sample text snippet that advertises a ficticious upcoming photography convention for example: "Our digital photography courses are ideal for anyone looking to take their digital photography to the next level by learning the ins and outs of professional digital photography. Check out our digital photography courses at the Chicagoland Photography Expo, a leading convention of digital photography professionals."

A person who makes Web sites for search engines will have NO problem using that kind of CRAPPY Web copy because all they care about is the search engines. NOT the user. I, on the other hand, would write something else, such as this: "Learn the fundamentals of digital photography from the experts at the 23rd annual Chicagoland Photography Expo being held June 21-22, 2008 at the Rosemont Convention Center. Our digital camera experts will help you pick out the perfect camera and teach you how to use your new digital camera so you can take professional quality digital pictures each and every single time."

Not only is such an example obviously not written for the search engines, but rather than being a bland piece of crap, it's actually written not just with the user in mind, but also FOR the user. Notice the numerous calls to action here. And the fact that user-focused copy does something that search-engine copy simply cannot do - it SELLS while still having keyword rich text that can rank very well in the search engines (especially when combined with quality relevant inbound links from other pages and sites). (Disclaimer: there is no real "Chicagoland Photography Expo" being held at the Rosemont Convention Center - this was just a hypothetical copywritng example used for demonstration purposes only.)

Do you honestly think that the first version is going to get people to want to attend the convention? Or do you think the second version will be more effective in increasing registrations. Anyone with even two neurons in their skullcaps will tell you right away that the second version will be far more successful. If you need more proof that black hat SEO is detrimental to your sites' health (and your profit margins), read why you should never write for the search engines.

Headings are another good example. People who make Web sites for search engines will have no problem abusing heading elements for SEO purposes, such as using H1 headings more than once per page, stuffing them inside anchors, skipping heading levels, stuffing keywords into headings and so on. The same holds true for TITLE tags. How often do you see "Toronto Web Design, Toronto Web Site Design, Web Design, Toronto Web Design Firm" in headings and title tags? Yes, they can cause the page to rank well, but they're practically WORTHLESS and are actually causing their site owners to lose a LOT of money (in this case, clients). Instead, a real SEO professional would focus on writing effective titles and headings that are written with people in mind while still being able to rank well in the search engines for the search terms they are targeting while also using headings and titles properly (that is, in full accordance with the HTML and XHTML specifications).

Now, I'm not going to derail this thread with a discourse on Web copywriting (or real SEO copywriting either, which has absolutely NOTHING to do with what many people consider to be SEO copywriting in the first place) since that's not the purpose of this thread, so I'll go ahead and stop here.

The point I've been making is that in order to properly handle an effective and successful search engine optimization campaign you have to know who you're making your Web site for - and it's not the search engines. If you take the time to create a well-constructed Web site that is accessible to everyone, looks good to the user (ok, design has nothing to do with SEO, but it does influence the user's perception of the site), great content that people would kill their own mothers to link to, and is easy to use, you will have a site that will ultimately be able to run itself (though giving it a good swift kick to the kiester every once in a while with a continuous quality link building strategy does help), thereby enabling you to have the time necessary to develop other Web sites that can do the same.

Instead, if you focus on making Web sites for search engines, you'll do nothing but find yourself in a never-ending struggle to beat the search engines with the same sites over and over and over again.

I'll finish this off with a simple reminder. Yes, the search engines make the rules. We have to follow them. If you don't like it, GET ANOTHER JOB. The search engines' main goals are to provide the most relevant search results to their visitors so they can in turn remain in business - not pad your bank account.

And what does this have to do with SEO? That just shows that they're good programmers, not search engine optimization specialists or experts (by the way, I can see this being a quality link anyway - a great example of why CAPTCHAs are useless; thanks for posting it).

I never described them as murderers. As ssandecki said, this is a community - treating others with disrespect is a great way to find yourself quickly being excluded from it.

What you're seeing change daily are the search results, not the algorithm. The algorithm does change from time to time, but the changes are mostly minor and do not affect those who build Web sites for people - they only affect those who try to spam and manipulate the index (you know, those people who buidl Web sites for search engines).

Uhm, they believe it because it's correct? Or is it because I am able to demonstrate proven results and common sense in plain conversational language that they can in turn apply on their own Web sites so they can also enjoy success? I don't lie, I don't cheat, and I don't steal or manipulate anyone. I do however make mistakes on occasion - and when I do, I own up to them (I am human, afterall).

Let's take a look at the SERPs again, shall we? The top result is Viagra.com - that's the official Web site. The second one is an article/entry on Wikipediaj (another relevant and reliable resource), and from there you start seeing a combination of spam and relevant Web sites (the latter including the Food and Drug Administration's Web page on the subject).

There's nothing wrong with mentioning that BH SEO exists - if only to know to avoid it. There's also nothing wrong with sticking to the fundamentals rather than chasing every one trick pony that comes around either.

And what advice would that be? That .edu and .gov backlinks are inherently worth more than incoming links from other TLDs? (And that's just the tip of the iceberg.) I wouldn't say that Aaron is great at SEO - he's good, there's no doubt about that. But his true specialty and expertise lies with marketing. And it's obvious that he's not above saying whatever it takes to make a buck either, as long as it doesn't come back to bite him or his bottom line -too hard.

To be honest, I was just pulling names out at random. Had I been deliberate with my selections, I would have included Jill Whalen's name in the list, as well as Danny Sullivan and the other acknowledged industry experts.

Even he agress with me:

That article has more holes than a brick of Swiss cheese - would you like me to start with his "definition" on cloaking? I can see the content with or without styles, the search engines sure as hell can, so how is it cloaking? Sure, it's manipulative - and a marketing device to get people to sign up, but it's not a real black hat SEO technique, it's just sneaky bullcrap.

I can cite more examples if you like.

And pray tell, how many of them are pure facts and not specualtion and misinformation?

Actually, yeah, I do. And I follow up on it too.

I have no problem beating the black-hats. Especially when I report them to Google. :-D

Actually it's not, and it doesn't. Again, building Web sites for people is not the same as buidling Web sites for search engines. I'd love to see Google or any other search engine come out and flat out say "you must build your sites for the search engines". (I'll give you a hint - it's not going to happen.) As I said earlier, search engines exist to provide the most relevant possible results to the people that are searching for terms and phrases on their service. If the service sucks, the people will go elsewhere. (Seriously - does anybody other than Granny Ethel use Lycos or Excite anymore?)

I'll let ssandecki's rebuttal to that arguement speak for itself. (And for the record, I never leave negative rep, and I hardly ever hand out positive rep either - but when I do, people notice.)

I wouldn't say an expert by Christmas, but you can definately know enough to get a job as an SEO consultant. I have some links available that may help you with your studies. If you like, I'll be more than happy to send them to you.

Good luck with your studies.

 

Whew, I'm glad you put my helpfulness and knowledge in perspective for me ... you've been a tremendous help with your angst and ridicule towards someone who disagrees with your buddy's stance on something.

However, you sure did go on the offensive very quickly. Is that how your type weeds out the "bad apples" here? Threatening people with infractions and taking cheap shots at the sites at sig sites that I don't mind exposing to all the users here (I've got dozens of other sites [non-spam] not posted here). Hey, if you don't like my sig sites I've listed that's great. 2 of them took me an afternoon to build and the 3rd is my screenname, which is a directory I am proud of as it is better than anything else I've seen. The 2 non-directories in the sig I've made great ROI on since they cost me only a few hours and combined have made $XXX/hourly at this point ... and still growing as the revenue comes pouring in.

Regardless of your threats, I will ALWAYS speak my mind and tell people the whole truth as I see it. You don't have to agree with me, << edit >>

This whole thing started by me posting that a good way to learn optimization: watching the SERPs in a very competitive market. Regardless how you feel about me or other people's SEO practices that are un-wholesome this is solid advice that any SEO worth their weight in salt understands. Dan takes cheap shots at me because he thinks I'm a spammer (buzz, wrong) and the convo begins. You jump in and decide it's good to help a buddy out without reading the entire thread .... let him handle his own mess, I see he's got paragraphs down there for me. I don't claim to be an SEO (I even hate the term). I am a pretty decent programmer who knows quite a bit about search marketing, should I not post help for others? Of course I should, momma taught me how to share. If you want to scan through my previous posts you will notice I help on a regular basis. Then again, sometimes I call people out for giving bad information ... this thread is not that case as I was the one who was put on the spot by Dan because I gave helpful information that he didn't like.

<< edit >>

Again dude, this wasn't your fight. Your posting is way off topic and brings nothing to this thread except you think I suck ... I've got many ex's that will agree with you there.

 

No, I'm reminding you of the rules of the forum. If you can't follow them thats your fault.


< Removed >

 

Dan, You seem like a nice enough guy. The only problem that we have is that you didn't like the advice that I gave. That's fine with me but you have no business attempting to discredit "watching the SERPs" as a legitimate way to learn the trait. You are giving bad advice there.

People, if you need a copywriter or designer go to Dan. If you need a slick little script or want to build a db driven site with 100's of 1000's of pages, come my way. Actually don't as I'm not taking on clients currently. If you want a SEO ... evaluate what your long term goals are and pick a consultant that's right for what you want. No 2 sites are the same and there are many right (and wrong) answers.

You are right, you did not call dp'ers murderers. You implied that your target audience would murder their mothers to come back to your site. I get analogize like the Simpson's one above so I understood your quote ... just as I'm sure you understood mine. No need to step up and say someone somewhere took offense to it, I'm sure mother's everywhere agree with me.

I too build sites for people, but without the engines in place we wouldn't get any traffic. So it's fair to say that we keep an eye on both. That by definition is gray hat since you are doing something to benefit your rankings whether it be social bookmarking or simply optimizing your title tags. The only way to wear a bleached white hat is to not know the SE's exist. It's fair to say neither you nor I build with a blind eye to search.

For lack of a more creditable resource ]) I had to quote Cutty on Google's algorithm changes

These aren't data (indexed pages) updates he is talking about, they are algo changes. And the quote is 1.5 years old so at this point in time the changes are probably happening everyday, if not multiple times daily. These are not major changes and would only effect a very small number of sites (not just spammers) ... but they are daily changes as I suggested.

All the advice given at dp is not sound .. some of it is, you should know that as well as I do. That comment was directed to the general advice given here daily (stuff like how PR makes your site rank better, etc) and not specifically towards you. You took too much offense to that one.

Wow, you picked the wikipedia article (which is at the top of almost every SERP these days) and the fda article to prove that spamming doesn't work for the viagra search. hehehe. How about this one for "buy viagra", which is much more BH oriented "buying" phrase. No wikipedia there, and the official site is #10. So apparently spam is more relevant in Gg's eyes than the official site. I don't agree but checking out their backlinks, analyzing their "on the page" content and checking which domains they piggyback their ranking from is useful to anyone ... even those of us who don't spam.

I'm not suggesting that parasite hosting and spamming guestbooks is the right way to approach things, but you have to look at the SERPs and figure out what is working then come up with your own G-rated plan of attack. I'm not in those results so no shots taken there please.

I say Aaron is quite good, probably better than the 2 of us combined ... but he's probably not good enough to be in the "buy viagra" results. The advice was simply to look at all areas of optimization, not just content and usability. For the record: edu & gov links count the same as .info links. TLD's don't mean a thing. The reason edu & gov links have a good rep is because they are frequently quoted in papers and articles as a creditable source. This means more incoming links which gives them more google juice, plain and simple.

Eli has more than his share of shady tactics. You pulled that quote WAY out of context as it's speaking about upward linking from foundation sites. These sites give their link juice to more profitable ones. You want them white hat so that they are very relevant and will never get banned. I don't think you want to start saying that Eli is on your side about WH sites, you couldn't be further from the truth. Every true black hatter has white hat sites too.

Also please do give me your opinion on what is cloaking. My definition (and many others) is simply showing the search engine one thing and a real visitor something else. There are many variations to that from page redirection to just changing the ads depending on the search term used. It's all the same thing the only thing that changes is how you use it to the benefit of users (or advertising as XMCP's example of experts-exchange implies). Search yourself in google and click both the link and the cached page to see what he is talking about.

I've dealt with ssandecki so nothing more to say about that. -Rep doesn't bother me and I never accused you of sending it my way (nor do I care), but thanks for stating that on the record.