How to Become an SEO Professional - Whys and How Tos
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When starting off, you can be involved in any field you like; the first SEO professionals were web masters and web developers. Some are web programmers; currently the majority I know are Internet marketers selling their products or affiliate products on the net. Your average SEO is a copy writer, a coder, a webmaster or an Internet marketer (including small business owners who take time out to learn SEO).
Whys
Most enter SEO so that they can sell products, theirs or someone else's. I did it so that I could offer a back end service to my web development clients, and now to promote online businesses. Glenn Murray, an Australian copy writer, probably went into Search Engine Optimization in order to promote his own sites on the search engines, add three number one rankings to his resume as an SEO copywriter, and prove himself as an SEO copywriter.
Michael Perdone went into SEO after successfully optimizing his wife's site. What distinguishes an SEO professional from an Internet marketer is results on the SERPs. A marketer may use opt-in lists, referrals, cold calling and various other methods to promote a web site; the SEO professional uses the search engines.
How Tos
Like I said, there is no hard and fast rule in how to become an SEO professional. An unhealthy interest in the vagaries of various search engines is necessary, as well as some technical skill (think of staring at tea leaves and trying to read the future). A knowledge of Internet protocols is useful, HTML coding skill and knowing what works and what doesn't -- for example, beautiful AJAX-enabled pages are useless to search engines, which only crawl on page content and don't bother with content added dynamically. But there are some skills that are invaluable in SEO.
Next: Skills Required >>
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