September 4th, 2009 by John | Posted under 
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Hope everyone’s having a great weekend, short and sweet post today of 7 tips to become a better SEO.
A search engine optimization specialist is a dime in a dozen nowadays, everyone from designers, developers to your marketing executives are calling themselves SEOs. There is a misconception that been an SEO simply involves some knowledge of how search engines work and getting links.
1. SEO for glory not for money. What separates the good from the bad is that great SEO work for the results. If your sole focus to become an SEO is for the money, than my last 9 tips will seem like a nuance. Great SEO work for the glory of the results. The pride of seeing their hard work bare fruition is something most people don’t understand, sure you shouldn’t get too emotionally attached to your work. But the driving force of good SEO is their passion to deliver the results.
2. Willingness to learn. No great SEO will claim they know everything there is about search engine optimization, those that do should be questioned about their knowledge and proof be shown. SEO has been and in my opinion will continue to be an evolving industry. As the world demands better search results from search engines, companies like Microsoft and Google will continue to change their services to fill the demand. It is a pre-requist for any SEO to constantly educate themselves. A simple question to ask when hiring an SEO. ( what publications, blogs, websites do they frequent and contribute to )
3. Willingness to share. SEO is a community based industry, a lot of work comes from referrals. And if you are unwilling to share your ideas with others and join discussions. You will find yourself a very lonely SEO with no work. I am not implying that to divulge your company secrets or all your knowledge to the world, once you become part of the community and build solid relationships with other SEO’s that you trust, this is where sharing of ideas can really bring great benefits.
4. Under sale, over deliver. We have all come across the loud mouth, Cr*p talkin salesmen that promise the world but can’t deliver the product. Don’t be that person, if you are in a client facing role, a great SEO presentation will include facts, accurate projections and great presentation skills. Always be honest with your clients when dealing with deliverables and results, sure most client won’t understand what it is exactly us SEO’s do but a great SEO should have the ability to ‘dumb’ down the answers. Be conservative in your traffic projections because when you over deliver results, everyone is happy.
5. Develop your analytical skills. A great SEO needs to possess an analytical mind, be able to gather data from different sources and combine / analysis the data to determine a favourable outcome. How can you perform an accurate keyword analysis, traffic projection or simply how many backlinks to acquire if you don’t have good analytical skills.
6. Learn to use these tools. Your job as an SEO will often require you to use these programs. Don’t rely on sys admins or designers to do the work, otherwise you could be waiting a long time, SEO is a time dependent service. The quicker you start, the faster you will see results.
- Google and other search engines. ( pretty obivious, but you would be surprise how many SEO’s dont know the basics )
- Cpanel / Plesk
- Server based traffic statistics programs ( AWstats, webalizer, mint, pikwik )
- FTP programs
- Basic HTaccess knowledge
- Google webmaster tools
- Google Analytics
- Basic HTML editors ( dreamweaver / notepad )
- Popular content manage systems ( wordpress / joomla )
7. Develop your creative mind. No one likes a robot or a drone, SEO is a creative process that requires you to create solutions for many different clients in different markets. If you are a freelance or inhouse SEO, having a creative mind will help you with your sales pitch, if you can consistently put forward new ideas to your clients that will increase their traffic, they will love you for it. Ideas can be big or small, such as these simple creative link-building concept.
I hope you have enjoyed these tips and have taken away some ideas to help you on your SEO journey. As always, if you agree or disagree with my views, please share them in the comments.
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These are terrific points. I think another important one that even the A-lister SEOs forget is to focus on their clients and ensuring they provide the best services possible rather than competing with others in their field. Their fame and authority will come from their clients, not how well they can best their opponents.
And making sure you enjoy your work is always a vital point. No matter how hard you try, your passion (or lack thereof) always shows through in your work.
Angie Haggstrom
Senior Copywriter & Founder, Angie’s Copywriting
I like point no.3 – willingness to share, because I notived that some insecured in-house SEOs are unwilling to share their knowledge with their colleagues from other department.
I like the 5th point, For a good SEO one must be skill-full and must know all techniques for good ranking.
Thanks for your comments, I know there are a few more points to consider. But these 7 points I beleive are the most important.
@angie – I agree, there is too much of A-list SEO worshiping going on within our industry. But I think to some degree it is also good because it brings our industry more mainstream and generates more discussion. It is also good for sleeper SEOs that work for their clients and glory for their clients success.
I get the feeling that the SEO industry is been domniated by males currently, so there is a lot of ego flying around.
What do you think?
Thanks for sharing the wonderful tips.
Hey John,
Sorry, your reply got stuck in the spam folder.
I agree that the discussion among A-listers is important, but it also has a terrible downside when it’s done…how should I put it? With an air of ignorance? Perhaps, disrespectfully? Scholars have discussions all the time (doctors, lawyers, etc), but it doesn’t have the same results for the simple reason that it’s done with an air of professionalism. (I’ve actually done a piece for Search Engine People that you might find interesting. It gives my thoughts on the subject, in a much better manner than I’ve done here. http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/dont-blame-the-snake-oil-salesman.html)
As for the extra testosterone, the world of SEO is undoubtedly male dominated. But, I’m not sure if it’s necessarily that there aren’t a lot of women in the industry. I think most of them are just more hidden, or they operate in several different fields rather than sticking purely to SEO.
I can tell you from personal experience that women are generally seen as knowing less on the subject unless you’re someone like Donna Fontenot or Jill Whalen who has been around long enough to out rank most of the men SEOs
Women just aren’t taken as seriously. I also think the ferocity at places like WebMasterWorld keeps a large number of them away.
It’s definitely an interesting subject to explore!
Angie Haggstrom
Senior Copywriter, Angie’s Copywriting
These are all very important for those working in SEO services as well as those in social media marketing services and all areas of business. And the difference they can make is astounding. Thank you so much for sharing. To other comments, these self-proclaimed “A-listers” have been tooting their own horns for years and are more talking heads than anything. I guess do what it takes to sell monthly subscriptions to forums and books. Some are legit, others are only surface level deep.
Thanks for taking the time to comment Scott.