SEO Training

[danielos4ever]

I am a newbie that started a few months ago, I have read all the beginning SEO articles, gone through the forums, listened to seo 101 on webmaster radio and attended the ses san jose conference. Altough I felt completely out my league at the conference and when reading the forums. I still feel like I have a lot to learn and was wondering if anyone knew if going through seo training could get me to the next step and if anyone had recomendations from personal experience. I have looked at sempo and seomoz as well as other seo companies offering seo training. I need the best value so any thoughts or comments would be great.

[cryptblade]

Great steps. I've been in SEO for years but always had to get the recap of the conferences and plow through all of the SEO resources.

But a lot of SEOs out there learned by doing. Kinda like cooking or sports - there's only so much you can "book learn". The real learning takes hand-ons learning and practice.

If you haven't started a website, start one now. Some of the big affiliate marketing/coupon sites out there started as ugly sites and slowly built up through promotion, advertising, and SEO.

If you start a website, you'll be able to apply what you've learned. It also makes it easier for someone to help you when you have something to show them and they can lead you by example.

[guinanie]

You should start in creating a blog , write unique content and apply the techniques you learned. Actual training on SEO or looked for a seo companies that offering seo training could be another step . Actually I dont have knowledge in SEO before, but through training given by the company, then reading tutorials and participate in forums and actual hand-ons training. Applying what you have learned could be the best way.

[briche]

I am a newbie that started a few months ago, I have read all the beginning SEO articles, gone through the forums, listened to seo 101 on webmaster radio and attended the ses san jose conference. Altough I felt completely out my league at the conference and when reading the forums. I still feel like I have a lot to learn and was wondering if anyone knew if going through seo training could get me to the next step and if anyone had recomendations from personal experience. I have looked at sempo and seomoz as well as other seo companies offering seo training. I need the best value so any thoughts or comments would be great.
for me. to be a great seo. first you must to have an idea to it, and it is continous learning. building new strategy. seo is like a technology..

[cryptblade]

Ok I have no idea what these 2 other guys are talking about. But before you spend money taking any more "training", create your own website.

Use that website to experiment with SEO. Let it be of little importance to you - just something to experiment and try out what you've learned.

If you've spent enough time on this forum and others, plus learned from articles and other resources out there, you should be fine.

Do NOT start a blog. A blog is NOT the way to start learning SEO hands-on. A blog is dynamic website and optimizing for blogs are almost a completely new monster.

Start a static website. Find keywords you want to experiment with. Apply your onpage SEO knowledge. Apply your offpage SEO knowledge. Evaluate your results - and come back here to ask others for help.

When you have a live website to show them, it'll be easier for them to help and teach you than just by teaching you without example.

[beu]

All the SEO training and SEO certification classes in the world will not get you an SEO job or SEO clients but, at the same time a high ranking example web site demonstrating "SEO best practices" will do both.

Your SEO training time and money would be much better spent by:
1. starting your own static site so as to learn basic html, xhtml, css and other. (So true cryptblade!)

2. joining as a paid member:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/index.php?referrerid=1753
http://www.seomoz.org/

3. staying up to date with the sites above as well as:
http://www.searchengineland.com/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
http://www.sphinn.com/
http://www.googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.blogoscoped.com/

4. buying, reading and memorizing the only book that matters in SEO:
http://www.seobook.com

There are lots of great sites and information out there on SEO but, the links above are the some of the best in the business. Best of luck!:)

[mikefarley]

Okay, some great links and tools have been posted and I'll second reading seomoz, searchengineland, etc.

I've been in the industry for 3 years now but learning SEO and SEM for over 5. I've been trolling this site for information since 2002 and the search engine resources section. Ah, nastalgia... Anyways onto the point:

Something that was said above jumped out at me: "seo is like technology" (I removed the 'a'). This is something that few people who get into this business fully comprehend. Search engines are always changing always morphing, therefore SEO and SEM is in a constant state of adaptation. And as the technology advances so do we.

There were plenty of people who spent $800 on an AMD chip only to have Conroe come out a week later and AMD fairly quickly cut prices in half. One day you think you've got the latest and greatest and the next you're humbled. It's the same with SEO, one week you think you've really figured it out and you're the latest and greatest stud on the SEO market and the next week Google and Ask start launching Universal Search and we're once again humbled. We start giving blogs a lot more weight, we start giving video a greater place in our marketing efforts, we start retooling our image optimization efforts, and we keep marching on.

This industry is not for the feint of heart which is why I enjoy it, to the right personality it's an addiction, it's trying to best your competitors and leave them scratching their heads. I think the most successful SEO guys not only enjoy the technology but really enjoy the competition or 'the game'.

Also you need to know what SEO really is. Some people think of SEO or SEM as this lofty white tower where we wave our magic search engine wand and make our websites jump to the top. If you really are interested in SEO understand this simple concept: successful SEO is made in the trenches and done day after day. It's not a secret recipe that we plug into our sites. It's hundreds of hours researching keywords, tracking, fine tuning content, checking ranking, making changes, and come Monday starting it all over again.

So don't think this will happen over night. If you want to learn SEO great! In my opinion it's the best business out there. But don't think it's going to happen within months. Going to SES when you first started was actually a pretty bad idea. I'm willing to bet it was very overwhelming, I mean most of the marketers that go there are overwhelmed.

Keep to the forums, daily blogs, research, create and play with a few sites, and start the research and practice over again. You'll learn more by doing than you will trying to cram pr algorithms or other complicated formulas. Keep at it every day and come next SES you'll be much more equipped to deal with it.