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Learn SEO? Beyond the Basics, SEO Classes, Courses, and Consultants

Learning SEO is not easy, or so they say. I actually believe that the basic concepts to SEO are actually rather easy. My preferred way to think about search engine optimization (SEO) is a metaphor of fitness. It is rather easy to understand what to do: eat right, exercise with weights, do aerobic exercises. Stick to it. It is somewhat difficult to stick to it, and the "marketplace" for SEO is a lot like the fitness / diet marketplace. There are a lot of quacks, a lot of magic pills, and a lot of SEO fitness guru's whose fame is more important than your success. But the basics of learning SEO are simple: good content, well structured, and well promoted to your community.

By Jason McDonald Senior SEO Instructor - JM Internet Group. Posted: December 4, 2009

Contents:

Why Learn SEO?
How to Think about SEO
Learn SEO: Beyond the Basics

Why Learn SEO?

First of all, ask yourself the most important question: why learn SEO? My metaphor for this blog post is physical fitness, so this question is akin to asking yourself why get physically fit? Just like real-world fitness makes you feel better about yourself, one reason to learn SEO is to feel better about your website. Nothing makes you feel better than seeing your website on Page 1 on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. But another reason is effectiveness. People who work out and eat right, live longer and live better. People who learn SEO and practice it effectively, have websites that outperform the competition in terms of customer leads and ultimately sales. SEO effective websites generate customer inquiries, and sales leads.

Financially, being physically fit can keep you out of the hospital, and lower your long-term health insurance expenses and even your insurance rates. Similarly, being SEO fit by learning SEO can lower your Pay-per-click advertising needs. Many clients and students of mine start out spending thousands of dollars per month on search engine advertising like Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter, only to do effective SEO and be able to reduce their spends. Despite what Google wants to tell you, AdWords in many cases is a sign that your marketing program is sick or at least ineffective. More realistically, you should learn SEO so that your SEO *FREE* strategy is your first priority, and your AdWords (which does have its real uses) builds upon your SEO strategy rather than replaces it. Being SEO fit can save you money, in other words.

How to Think about SEO

How to think about SEO is very important, even before you begin an SEO effort. Metaphor can become reality. Many people think of SEO as some mystical, dark science that only geeky people who are either rude or weird (or both) can practice. You must be a mysterious computer science person, who knows PERL backwards and forwards and uses the command line rather than a GUI editor to do effective SEO. This myth is perpetuated by the SEO industry, which seeks to mystify and obfuscate the basic principles of SEO. You buy into the myth when you think of SEO as something mysterious and dark.

Another metaphor of SEO is that it is sneaky. That Google, Bing, or Yahoo do not want us to practice it, and therefore it's a bit dirty like spam. While there are many dark practices in SEO, I strongly object to this metaphor and in my classes teach SEO according to a different metaphor, a metaphor of "Google PR." But nonetheless if you think of SEO as hard, mysterious, or sneaky you have already begun to close your mind to an endeavor which is actually quite fun and open. SEO is basically all about 1) creating good content, and 2) structurally communicating that content to your community via Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

So, how I recommend you think about SEO as you set out to "Learn SEO" is to think about it as PR (public relations) for Google. Just as in the olden days, businesses pitched "editors" at those antiquated institutions like the New York Times or Washington Post, today we are pitching the search engine on carrying our content on Page 1. I think of SEO as thinking about how to understand Google, as if it were a friendly but busy editor that needed my effective PR help as I pitch my stories and structure my content.

Learn SEO: Beyond the Basics

So we have two metaphors. First, think of learning SEO as learning to be physically fit. And, second, think of learning SEO as learning to play "Public Relations" with Google. I think both of these are good metaphors. But beyond metaphors what are your realistic options to learn SEO?

• Read a Book - search Amazon.com or your favorite bookstore for books on SEO. If you are a book learner, many of these are pretty good. I've reviewed a few on my blog, and one of the SEO basic texts is Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent. I also like SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford. These two books are the basics; many of the more advanced texts, I feel, lose the forest for the trees (as in The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie Stricchiola, not my favorite).

• Learn SEO by Taking a Class - if you are lucky enough to live in a big urban area, like San Francisco or New York, in some cases, you can take a real-world class. I teach an SEO class in San Francisco at AcademyX, which is a lot of fun, for example. I really enjoy working with attendees one-on-one. But not everyone lives in San Francisco, nor is this always conveniently offered...

• Learn SEO Online - you can sign up for one of the JM Internet Groups' courses on this website. These are a great 7 session way to learn SEO, and are especially designed for busy marketing professionals and businesspeople, all taught at the convenience of your home computer.

• Learn SEO by Doing - this is actually the best way. Like physical fitness, if you make a commitment to SEO, and do it (with a little guidance from a professional), over time you can both become an SEO expert and synergize your SEO expertise with your expertise of your company and its products or services.

I am not against hiring an SEO consultant (I do some of that myself), but just as in physical fitness, a good fitness coach can indeed be found. But ultimately the best SEO consultant can't make you learn SEO yourself, nor make your SEO strategy effective. They can coach you, consult with you, cajole you, even yell at you. But SEO - like physical fitness - is something that you learn (and do) ultimately yourself.