Jordan Kasteler

For those who didn’t catch Brian Carter’s interview with me you can check it out here: Utah SEO Pro, Jordan Kasteler, gets Interviewed by Brian Carter

Also, you can catch my latest post on Search Engine Journal regarding using social media question and answer sites to build links, traffic, and reputation.

Last year I wrote a post dedicated to the top 3 unsung heroes of SEO in 2007. They were: Marios Alexandrou, Bill Slawski, and Sebastian X. While Bill and Sebastian weren’t necessarily “unsung” I felt they still didn’t get the credit they deserved so I wanted to give them props.

This year there’s been some people really making it shake that I’d love to give my allegiance to and thank them for their efforts and contributions in the search engine marketing arena. While it was hard to choose just three top SEOs and Internet marketers, and there’s many many more, here’s the people who deserve a tip of the hat:

Ruud Hein

- Ruud’s Sphinn Profile

Ruud works at Search Engine People and has written some great blog posts over there. Starting back in January, he started a series of posts entitled How Search Really Works. These posts are unbelievable written well and ended up scratching the surface on the world of informational retrieval and phrase-based indexing. He really won my respect with this series because he demonstrated his in-depth knowledge in a manner that anyone could understand.

In addition to being a great SEO and Internet marketer, Ruud also is very fluent in Web development including server-side scripting.

David Harry

- David Harry’s Sphinn Profile

David Harry runs his own Internet marketing and Web development business with his wife as well as blogs on HuoMah.com. This year he has released a new edition of his SEO handbook that teaches people search engine optimization best practices.

David’s been offering Internet marketing and Web design services since about 2002. He his a huge contributor on Sphinn.com and almost always has featured content on the homepage. He is very talented in all SEM areas but has the keenest interest in:

• Personalized Search implications
• Phrase based and semantic search approaches
• Temporal ranking factors (content creation and link building programs)
• Social Media Marketing and Qualitative research

I asked David about his primary job role. His response was “I have a few really as I do still handle the managerial/financial aspects of Verve, our web design company. As such I get involved in tasks from technology plans to marketing ones, pricing and budgeting forecasts and analysis to SEO site audits and more. While I do still work in the implementation of the programs, more and more these days I work more in a consulting/planning/analysis capacity. I enjoy working on the larger planning/analysis areas which does tend to cut down on the amount of hands-on time I have available. I do still enjoy that aspect though and will always be down in the trenches to some extent as that’s where things are really happening…“

David author’s some great posts on his blog. Throughout the year he’s had some big hits but here’s his favorite three:

Social Search Engines – Another chat with Bill Slawski; Bill being one of David’s favorite people to talk to in the industry (besides myself) and social search being an area of acute interest.

The Value of Social Media Marketing (Part II) – This post had a variety of social media marketing people (including myself) helping out to answer some of the many questions that clients and cohorts had .

Link builders Guide to Historical Ranking Factors – While it may not be a sexy topic, understanding historical ranking factors is important and not discussed very often. David is hoping to do more in this area this year.

If you get a chance, shoot David an IM. He’s a great guy to talk to, very friendly, and is willing to talk SEO all day long.

David Snyder

- David Snyder’s Sphinn Profile

David Snyder has worked professionally in SEO about two years now. While fairly new to the game, he’s accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. He is the search engine strategist and Internet marketer for JRDunn.com, a blogger on Snydey Sense, and a contributing author at MarketingPilgrim.com. You can catch David speak at Search Engine Strategies Toronto very shortly.

David sees his strengths in four main areas and this is what he had to say about each area:

1. SEO – Realizing how to build a site with search in mind. Creating a
   well structured architecture around solid, ongoing keyword research.
   And creating a lasting link building strategy to move the site into a
   competitive placement.
2. Social Media – I think I see social in a multi-platform view, which
   is what it takes to be successful. A good social media campaign can’t
   be simply blogs or video or social networks, it needs to be an
   integrated and layered concept that builds upon itself.
3. Search Egine Marketing – I have strong background with running pay per click
   strategies with high ROI. I am a Google Adwords Qualified
   Proffesional, and led my last agency to Google Qualified Company
   Status
4. Content and Press Strategies – I know this kind of works in with
   “SEO”, but I find that a lot of SEOs have a hard time building content
   distribution networks whether it be for press or other content. This
   goes beyond link building as it also translates into a strong traffic
   generation strategy.

Three great blog posts from David this year are:

• Beyond Keyword Research: Competitive Analysis
• Beyond Keyword Research: Utilizing Analytics
• The Sport of Reputation Management

David is also a great guy to converse with. Keep an eye on him because he’s going to really make things in happen in these upcoming years.

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. Portland SEO, Greg says that 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

There are many great people who make the Search Engine Optimization industry a great place. There are so many honorable mentions I’d feel guilty listing my allegiance to them in fear I’d leave someone out. From my perspective, there’s three individual SEO specialists who don’t get as much attention in the limelight as they deserve so this is my tribute to them. Let’s thank these fine gentleman for bringing many things to light with the power of blogging.

Bill Slawski of SEObytheSea.com – Although Bill is well-known throughout the SEO industry, I still don’t think he receives the credit he deserves. This man has an uncanny ability of decrypting insanely ambiguous search engine related patents and translating them into plain English in terms the average person can comprehend. Don’t get me wrong, Bill’s an All-Star, he’s spoken at many conferences and has his fan-base but in my eyes he’s the MVP of 2007.

Sebastian X of Sebastians-Pamphlets.com – Sebastian, a.k.a. Sebastian X, is also pretty well-known in the SEO industry but I also do not think he’s given the props he deserves. He has carved quite a niche for himself being the ultimate guru in the programming spectrum of SEO. He has a wide array of experience with Apache, PHP, MySQL which he utilizes to always think outside the box with. You won’t find content like his much elsewhere so I recommend you check out his blog.

Marios Alexandrou of AllThingsSEM.com – I am sure I’ve read Marios’s blog postings time and time again in the past, but just recently has his blog really caught my attention. What I love so much is his updated SEO Expirements. Sure, I’ll come across experimentation here and there and even conduct my own, but rarely do I see it reported so straight forwadly in it’s own category of a site. Marios recently had a story hit Sphinn.com homepage regarding a career in SEO being a bad move. I love his insightful opinions on different things. So definitely check him out.