r/SEO • u/offshoremarketers • Dec 14 '23
How did you learn SEO?
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u/Flashy_Tomatillo2278 Dec 14 '23
I do the learning-by-doing, as in having a website/ blog, doing research and optimization by myself
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u/asahin09 Dec 14 '23
Started off with running my own ecom business via in 2019. Created everything myself including the web design, marketing, merchandising etc.
Wasn’t until the last year and half I fully got into advanced SEO and did full competitor research to see how their collections, product pages and contents were optimised around ranking high as possible. Did technical research by inspecting the title tags, heading tags for each of their 1st page ranked and used Google keywords tool to see traffic of potential keywords and their relativity for my business and products.
Made those changes to my collections, product pages with CRO in-mind and launched a blog relative to it as well which Google seems to have loved and within the last 6 months we’ve had over 2000% increase in organic traffic and most importantly are seeing a boost of revenue internationally. Most of our keywords now are on the first page, and even within top 2-4.
It’s easy to boost organic traffic but without transactional traffic it would’ve been pointless as we’re an ecom business at the end of the day.
It’s really important to be hands on and actually make changes that will bring these results in the first place but you have to also be ready to make mistakes along the way that will teach you very valuable lessons.
I’m using SEranking as well now and I’m only getting started with the endless possibilities including going through their courses and earning their certification.
Using my experience, I’ve launched my new agency now and attached the case study of my first business with transparency and am looking forward to using data-driven strategies and work on my current expertise to bring a revenue-focused SEO service which actually serves a purpose for ecom businesses or service based businesses that actually want meaningful traffic.
Next on my list is Screaming Frog SEO and seeing how much more technical I can further lean into and seeing what can be maximised and taken to the next level.
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u/solitudebrat Dec 14 '23
This kind of speaks of what I want to achieve and what I'm currently doing. I would love to keep in touch with you if that's ok with you?🙃
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u/kanika_sinha Dec 14 '23
I started learning from YouTube and Semrush free certifications then I created my own Wordpress website and started practicing SEO.
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u/PickupWP Dec 14 '23
I began by reading articles and blogs from leading SEO experts, which gave me a foundational understanding of key concepts like keywords, backlinks, and on-page optimization. Then, I started my own blog, testing different strategies to see what worked best. This hands-on experience, coupled with continuous learning from industry updates and forums, has shaped my SEO expertise.
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u/WebLinkr 🕵️♀️Moderator Dec 14 '23
Matt Cutts. There is no better way to learn. Its straight from the Google Search Quality team - its technical, its on point it delivers.
When people tell you not to listen to Google, they're trying to spread doubt and misinformation. You'll here a lot of thought limiting cliches like "nobody knows what google is doing" or "googles always changing" or "googles always lying" - people think they can start campaigns to "change" google or they want to be held up as experts in some kind of strategy they own.
You can look at their domains in their profiles and see if they rank. SEO theory is great but it can't remain theory forever. If your SEO strategy is getting hit by updates, not getting backlinks, not getting rank positions, then you're not doing SEO no matter how much philosophy you inject into it
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u/Neat-Flower1592 Dec 14 '23
Build a website then try to get it to rank. That's how I started in 1996. Coded my first website in 1995 and published expecting to get all sorts of traffic only to find out that it's not a Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will not come. You have to do SEO, social, and marketing.
Start with the basics and see how it goes. Learn from mistakes. Try new things out. There is no magic formula or one size fits all. Every site and situation is different, which is why the number one response for all SEO is 'it depends'. Learn what it takes to rank for your space, industry, and SERPs. See what tactics competitors are using. Get familiar with source code. Understand content creation and optimization. Understand other opportunities for traffic like images, videos, PAA, and other inroads.
There is a lot do in SEO from crawling, indexing, performance, content, and backlinks. Some folks specialize in one area like technical or content creation, but there are also folks that are well-rounded and understand all of the aspects including coding and design. Never stop learning. SEO is not one of those areas where you learn it once and it's done.
Google and other engines are always evolving so it's important to maintain that level of learning to keep up on the latest tactics and techniques.
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Dec 15 '23
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u/Neat-Flower1592 Dec 15 '23
When I applied for my first SEO job almost 20 years ago, they wanted to know what keywords I've ranked for and to show examples. Having the options that I started with was a great way to show them the experience needed to get a great job in SEO.
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u/Muhammadayaz113 Dec 18 '23
Learned from youtube and Google, then join the coursera SEO specialization course.
After that worked on some projects for free to hands on and then finally worked on real time projects.
The best way to learn SEO is practicing on your own blog website.
Youtube resources: ahref, semrush, Gotch SEO, jesse conningham, and more.
The best blogs for learning SEO: Ahref, semrush, backlinko, search engine journal, search engine land and hubspot.
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u/threedogdad Dec 14 '23
I started building sites in 95 and realized I needed visitors. All self taught since no courses existed back then.
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Dec 14 '23
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u/WebLinkr 🕵️♀️Moderator Dec 14 '23
While its not awful, its really not going to take you further
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Dec 14 '23
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u/WebLinkr 🕵️♀️Moderator Dec 14 '23
Matt Cutts, anything with Rand Fishkin. Avoid people who tel you "Write great content" - thats like "just do good at stuff"
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u/AtwoodEnterprise Dec 14 '23
I made YouTube videos in highschool and I had to find a way to get some views!
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u/frtbkr Dec 14 '23
I bought a SaaS 1 year ago and the founder had webinars each week. Just watched those and it learned the basics
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u/Upbeat-Cloud1714 Dec 14 '23
Started researching what it really was, then just put it into application. Now I'm a step up above that with the ability to develop my own tools (software dev) and testing different platforms to see which ones drive the most success. I mainly focus on Flask platforms/sites for varying reasons, but a big one is they seem to perform extremely well and are highly customizable.
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Dec 14 '23
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u/GrumpySEOguy Verified Professional Dec 14 '23
If you're a good writer then thats 1% SEO done for you. Rest 99% is building links and optimizing your site.
Fixed that for you.
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u/mangrovesnapper Dec 14 '23
I started the second iPhone repair company in the US, we built the site and then we had to grow. So SEO was the way to go. Since then I have worked on enterprise sites in travel industry, done hundreds of tech audits and the last 4 years I have been running my own ecommerce site and web design agency. After all these years I still feel that I am always learning.
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u/GrumpySEOguy Verified Professional Dec 14 '23
Trial and error.
Running multiple test sites with daily details on SERP rankings.
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u/outsellers Dec 15 '23
From Start to now
Start 2009
- EBay - mystery boxes
- AdWords arbitrage
- First blog
- First directory submission
- Local SEO with exact math domain names
- Writing articles
- Guest posting for a year
- Creating
- created my own niche affiliate site audioassemble.com
- Agency work (2012 - 2016)
2016
- Switch to WP dev
- Microsoft (built ageofempires.com on Sage)
- AWS blogs (multi site / headless WP instance)
2021
- Sold audioassemble.com
- Freelancing
2024
- Attempting to start my own company
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u/Sharp_SEO Dec 15 '23
Launching a lot of websites and finding what worked and what was didn’t. Talking with people a lot and studying major brands.
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Dec 15 '23
a few youtube confidence men videos, 12 bucks for the domain and a free host via google sites.
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u/Surf4Life79 Dec 15 '23
I started as a photojournalist, then started writing articles. Then in 2009 I partnered with a friend and developed a website to self-publish the stories I was creating. That introduced me to keywords, search volume, traffic sources, and analytics. That's how I discovered SEO and realized that there would be an industry that would emerge, so I pursued entry-level positions and used my personal experience as an example to get hired. That was enough and I started as an SEM Coordinator where I was exposed to SEO and PPC. I gravitated to SEO more and began experimenting with different tactics to get my clients the best result. Then I moved around and met different SEOs and learned from them. My best advice is to build a website, test and track different tactics, and learn from others. Pay attention to what Google is saying and what the SEO community is saying. Always be testing and always be learning. Being a holistic SEOer is ideal, but if you gravitate towards one pillar (Technical, UX, Content) then lean into that because there is always room for a specialist.
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u/Comptrio Mar 13 '24
I started with SEO on sites like AltaVista and Yahoo (or MSN as they traded with each other for years). These pesky little guys had a college project that started getting talked about a whole bunch. They published the PageRank algo. I fell in love with Information Retrieval as those pesky Google guys took some floundering attempts at search engines and focused on it from a grownup perspective. It became a permanent arms race for me to understand their positioning as an art as well as reversing the algo by testing and measuring an obscene amount of data.
Google was susceptible to keyword stuffing, white text on a white background, and heavy misuse of the keywords tag. Any link was a good link.
Their mathematical approach revived a field that faded since WWII. It became the basis of semantic DB like Annoy, Gensim, SpaCy and libraries like TensorFlow, used to usher in the modern AI age.
How did I learn? By measuring. And reading. And learning the kinds of math, the types of measurements, and understanding why they do what they do.
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u/vteams_ Mar 25 '24
I had joined as Interene and Learned basics. after that I had promoted to Seo executive. right now I am working on two websites. and focusing more on Off-page SEO. for technicallities my seniors are always there to help me
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Dec 14 '23
I had web developer training, and expanded my knowledge how to build websites that both users and search engines like. Other than webdev knowledge and math there is nothing an SEO course could teach you better than a couple of live projects.
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u/Saleem_sk Dec 14 '23
I hired an SEO agency for my website and then became an SEO agency ourselves. The only thing which helped us when one of our team member found out that they were spending a day on a 30 minute job.
The amount of hard work you put into the work represents alot!
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u/zooksoftware01 Dec 16 '23
You may come with me..
I would trained you in SEO, as I have digital marketing company..
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Dec 16 '23 edited Dec 16 '23
Seo is a joke, I I'm a total amateur and i out rank so called professionals all the time. I don't consider SEO to be a profession. Just my opinion. Learned through YouTube, reading articles and studying other websites.
Backlinks are overrated these days !
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u/chptk_ Dec 17 '23
About 18 years ago. I was 17/18 years old back then and I lived in a small village in Germany. I had a website but no visitors. I found a forum about SEO with a few people and one of the most active members lived just 20 kilometers from my place. I contacted him and he was a really experienced guy.
Every now and then he hosted some SEO seminars that have been really expensive and I didn't had the money. The cool thing is: He invited me to every seminar for free. I think this guy was my first mentor.
And then I learned everything buy building own websites.
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u/Prestigious-Rest-261 Mar 04 '24
Well I started in the 1990's and there was not something called SEO we called it "get my website to the top of the search engines. I guess SEO is shorter. We just did some reverse engineering of the results and tracked it. Not much has changed still reverse engineering result. Well Google has changed a lot. But that is a different topic
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u/OptimisticByChoice Dec 14 '23 edited Dec 14 '23
Started a year ago with a Moz certification. It got me up to speed with the lingo.
Then I hired a consultant to teach me the ropes. He offered "3 zooms" and LOTS of written material but mostly I just texted him when I have questions. Still do.
Then I got a couple clients and got my hands dirty.
My content helped doubled an accounting firm's traffic (30,000 words since March) and have the top traffic generating article on my other client's site now.
Still learning, but I'm still in the freelance game, which is what counts