How did you learn SEO? Did any of you purposely decide to learn SEO or did you just get dragged in because you had a site that needed improving? Has anyone found a college course on it? Perhaps its the challenge that makes it a good hobby? Does anyone buy books? or are you self taught via forums like this? I am just interested, as I am self taught and I have no qualifications to show, but I guess its the evidence in your site that proves your ability.
I think it would be impossible to create a college course around seo (or at least a course that had value), as seo is changing constantly. What was acceptable last year is black hat this year. If you were on a course that was written 2 years ago no employer is going to want to go anywhere near you as they know you are learning out of date tactics.
I have a site that needs to rank. The webdesigner told me some basics. After that I was looking around in forums and learned step by step. But there are still many steps to go for me. I am just a beginner.
I realise what you are saying, but its assumed after the 2 years of college, the person is likely to be continuing on everyday and evolving tactics like the rest of us. One day I think it will happen. Part of the education could be how to evolve ones skills.
Trial and error setup a site where you can do your experiments read the forums and see if you can apply what you learn
Well at least you admit you are a beginner, unlike a lot of other people here, that seem like beginners but promise the world
Still learning...... Google's unpredictable behavior made me get into all this. Nopes! Yep! There are some good ebooks available for SEO. But, almost all the basic knowledge is available at forums. At the end, it's about learning from your mistakes and trying new things.
8 years of trial and error, with many success and failures along the way! I do find that aside from the obvious on-page optimization, that Link Building has done more for me than any other SEO strategies Funny thing though, If I can't get Google to Love a website, it seems that Yahoo and MSN always will... and Vice-Versa
Reading, then trial and error...and yes, I learned SEO purposely to improve my website's presence and traffic.
trial and error however as soon as you get seo nailed you need to learn marketing to really boost your profits.
The basics of SEO could be taught (link development, anchors, dofollow etc). The are many different areas of SEO that could be taught as modules towards an academic qualification.
You can learn SEO from the forum and online tutorials and we do SEO to increase the traffic and ranking of the website.
It all comes with experience. You may refer the online books for SEO, but all things you may not get from any book, it comes with experience. And the purpose of SEO is obviously for the traffic.