Utah Search Engine Optimization | Utah SEO Consultant

Rebecca Kelley, of SEOmoz, recently wrote a post on ShoeMoney.com entitled “How SEO is Like Guitar Hero”. The breadth of her post is an analogy of how learning SEO is like playing guitar hero for the first time. It seems extremely hard and overwhelming but the more you dive into it the better you get and the easier it seems. At that point, you advance to a whole new level and encounter the same thing all over again.

Figuring out the best way to learn SEO is hard. You don’t know where to begin, who to trust, where to look, what to believe, or how to begin. I’m going to highlight how I started and a few things I’ve learned along the road to hopefully help you decide how you want to begin.

At the very beginning I was working as a Web designer and when times were slow I was mentored by an SEO professional, Jason Miller of EngineReady, to help create landing pages for certain clients. In this process I learned the ins and outs of on-page optimization. It wasn’t until a few year later did I decide to further my education in search engine optimization.

Not knowing where to begin, I dove into the deep end of the pool swimming in an overload of information from blogs and podcasts that I found via search. The frustration I dealt with was that often times author’s information contradicted what I had just read a few articles before. I spent weeks absorbing all the information I could then began implementing and testing different strategies.

Before long, I was figuring out what worked, what didn’t work, who the authoritative authors were and who to ignore. From that point forward I’ve spent approximately 10-12 hours a week keeping up on industry news and blog publishing to keep my education current.

Learning SEO the RIGHT Way

An important thing to note is that every Website is different. What works on one site may not work on another. What worked yesterday may not work or work as well today. So the best thing to do, after learning the basics, is to begin testing yourself. Sure it’ll be a baptism by fire and you’ll make mistakes along the way and come across a few roadblocks.

Make sure you seek out the reputation and background of the professionals, like Portland SEO Greg Beddor, that share their experiences and testing with you. Test results will vary for each Website, but there is a lot to be learned from others that can save you some costly mistakes.

So a summary of the key takeaways are:

• Reading and Research
• Conduct Testing
• Get Professional Training