So you want to be an SEO?

It is said there is no such thing as a stupid question. Which I would agree with. However there is such thing as the “I don’t have it in me to be an SEO” question.

SEO forums tend to have masses of information in them to help potential SEOs to learn tips. If you are lucky you will come across an interesting question or debate. If you are lucky you will find a thread where a question was asked and the correct answer given, rather that a string of absolute rubbish. The unfortunate truth is that most forums are filled with “I don’t have it in me to be an SEO” type questions that trigger rubbish replies by the equally ignorant or sarcastic responses from the mods (I’m a particular fan of LMGTFY).

Please tell me what is a backlink

What does nofollow mean

What is a H1?

Those are just a few examples of the sort of question someone who is learning SEO shouldn’t need to ask. If you do need to ask those questions in a forum without having the initiative to look it up with a simple search then you don’t have the initiative to run an SEO campaign.

1. You will never have the level of understanding to make an educated guess about the likely effects of a particular activity.
2. You will never be able to keep ahead of the game and the competition by coming up with new ideas for content, linking strategies, linkbait, etc.
3. You will never be able to work with developers while they apply the new technologies while checking with you that they don’t have a detrimental affect in natural search.

If you are still hanging in there after starting off asking the sorts of questions you shouldn’t need to, it is likely you will only be reading half the advice that you are given:

You read in a forum: “Include target keywords in your title tags”
So you stick every single target keyword in the homepage title tag. Perhaps you will put them in every page throughout the site.

You read in a forum: “H1’s carry more weight than H2s, H3s, etc
So you make every page heading a H1

You read in a forum: “Alt tags are read by search engines”
So you stuff the alt tags with all your keywords rather than a meaningful description. You will probably also say it’s ok to have an image based navigation “cos search engines read alt tags and the alt tag becomes the anchor text”

You read in a forum: Backlinks help a website to rank
So you pay $50 for an automatited submission job to 5000 directories.

You read in a forum: Content is King
So you copy all the content you can find and replicate it on your own website.

If you REALLY want to be an SEO. You need to be able to do a bit more than read what someone tells you. You also need to have a degree of common sense and creativity. You need to understand that for every statement there are 100 “if’s”, “althoughs” and “only whens”. You need to live, breathe and sleep SEO get a little abnormally excited about SEO (probably).

If that doesn’t sound like you then perhaps you should think about doing something else. Or you could get a job at an agency doing monkey SEO (doing one job exactly how you are told to do it).  At least then you can wear the badge and pretend you are cool like us.

Just for the record I actually take great delight in working with bright new SEOs. Those who not just listen to your advice but then go away and look into it themselves and perhaps come back and challenge it with a decent argument. I have had the pleasure of working with a few people like that. But in case you think I’m being a bit harsh on the not-so-bright ones you haven’t seen anything yet.