SEO; Advice for a newbie

Yesterday, I received a call from a person who wanted to get trained in SEO, and was hoping I could help him in the training. He wanted to go through practical classes that would enable him to learn every aspect of SEO.

He mentioned to me that even though my website (SEO-BestPractices) is all about SEO, it is targeted towards webmasters wanting to implement SEO best practices and business owners who wish to implement SEO themselves. It is not presented in the form of tutorials to help students learn SEO.

After talking to him for a while, I realized that he does not have much of an idea about SEO, but he liked the concept. I asked him to check out various online tutorials to get started on the subject, the internet has a lot of valuable and free resources, and it makes sense for any beginner to first go through basic SEO stuff so that they understand what SEO entails before making  up their minds about pursuing SEO as a career. I could see that he was confused because there is so much written about SEO already that it can be overwhelming for any person to go through so much of information.

I asked him why he wanted to learn SEO. His answer was, “I love the internet, and digital marketers are the most sought after these days”.

If you too are keen on a career in SEO, I am listing below some must have key attributes that would help you in this profession. SEO is certainly not rocket science but it is increasingly becoming competitive and technical:-

1. Excellent communication skills
2. Love the internet – No problems about this one!
3. Understand how the internet functions
4. A clear understanding regarding domain name, web hosting, web sites, and how they are all connected.
5. Html knowledge is an advantage
6. Curious and creative
7. Have dollops of patience
8. Analytical bent of mind
9. Understand the business side of things

The default attributes are:- “gaining in-depth knowledge“, “the thirst to learn“, and a never say die attitude!

I would strongly recommend that you go through four of my favourite resources in order to understand SEO and the whole gamut of Internet marketing. These resources provide you almost anything you will want to know about SEO :-

• Search Engine Watch
• Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
• Learn SEO

And “How to do SEO” from this website.

Yesterday’s call made me think a lot. Even though my website has a lot of information for any SEO newbie, it does not have a step-by step training guide for students since the objective was not exactly that.

However, I need to do something about that!