The Golden Hat

During my time spent working as an online marketing generalist I’ve been lucky enough to gain exposure to all sorts of digital marketing experiences. These experiences have contributed to what I consider the fundamentals of a good SEO career and proper SEO education. From launching websites, optimizing massive e-commerce sites for search visibility, PPC campaigning, conversion analysis, social media involvement, and the list goes on, I’ve been able to piece together thoughts about what makes someone a good SEO professional.

Since we work in an industry where formalized education does not yet exist it’s even more important that you find someone who has “been there, done that.” Sure, you can take certification exams through the major engines such as Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador and Google Certified AdWords Professional, yet they are simply tests that measure your understanding of the fundamental concepts of paid search and not a true measure of search or PPC knowledge.

Despite there not being any formalized education for search engine optimization and search engine marketing you can still find some very talented SEO professionals who have only 1-2 years of work under their belt. Based on my time in the industry and working with other knowledgeable professionals I’ve compiled the below list of skills and experience one should look for when seeking an SEO pro.

1. Experience working on e-commerce websites - large, database driven websites typically have several inherent SEO issues that are both technical and non-technical. Most e-commerce sites will have thousands upon thousands of dynamically generated URLs, layers upon layers of duplicate content, insufficient or missing content that is unique and crawlable, a disorganized site taxonomy and nomenclature, and more. What better way to learn SEO than to work on a site that throws just about every possible SEO nightmare at you?

2. Has their own blog or website - it’s one thing to take a site that already exists, make some tweaks to it, and then sit back and measure the changes in rankings and visibility. It’s something entirely different when you create a site or blog from scratch and use it as your “sandbox” for testing out what works and doesn’t work. If you want someone who is truly passionate and knowledgeable about search engine marketing then find someone who does it at home once their 9-5 is over.

3. Understands the technical and non-technical elements - no one can become an SEO expert without knowing the technical elements to search. No, you don’t need to be able to code a site from scratch or write your own search algorithms. However, you should be technically versed enough so that you can understand and communicate with the engineers who are building your sites or the search quality analyst who is refining your algorithm. Know how to create a robots.txt file from scratch, XML Sitemaps, scan source code for vital information such as anchor text, tags, alt text, identify coding languages such as JavaScript, Flash, AJAX and CSS, research and resolve status code issues with 302s and 404s, etc. All of the non-technical stuff is mostly logic driven so once you have the technical elements down then the rest should come much more easily.

4. Stresses creativity and innovation - a huge component of SEO that is often overlooked or completely ignored is innovation. How can you create viral content and syndicate it across the web? What technology can you leverage that your competitor is not? What social media can you participate with to start generating new link value and site traffic? Think multilaterally, not unilaterally and find someone with ideas that s/he is passionate about.

5. Knows black hat/spam techniques - not so they can use them on your site and game the engines for rankings, but to ensure you don’t accidentally get penalized for black hat techniques and suffer the consequences of plummeting rankings.

A few other tips that I highly recommend when hiring an SEO professional or building a solid SEO career. Definitely stay highly involved with your favorite blogs and the major search engine blogs. Constantly staying on top of recent developments and contributing your own thoughts helps with the development of your own knowledge. If you interview and SEO’er who can’t immediately tell you which blogs they follow, be suspicious of their involvement with the SEO community. Afterall, the engines and the blogs are the “classroom” for the SEO profession. An SEO professional who doesn’t read various SEO resources is like an undergraduate student who doesn’t attend class.

What else do you think makes a great SEO professional?

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There are two things in my life that I am particularly passionate about right now.

Endurance Running and Search Engine Optimization

Along the way I’ve come to realize that the two interests, though at first unrelated, have similarities so striking that I now see them as inseparable. I doubt that I can become exceptional at one if I don’t also have the other. I can explain it best with a thought provoking example. It’s the classic scenario of an engineer turning to nature for inspiration and innovation.

I remember once reading about a mechanical engineer who took a vacation to the Far East. During his trip he was hiking up a mountain side and nearly took a thump to the head as a passing owl blazed by his head in a defensive gesture suggesting that the hiker was stomping through his territory. What interested and inspired the engineer though wasn’t that fact that he evaded certain injury, but that he didn’t hear the owl coming. He wondered how the owl was able to swoop down on him undetected and without a sound yet at such speed.

The engineer’s curiosity eventually led him to read and learn about the design of the owl’s feathers and their delicately frayed tips. It was through his experience and observation that he came to understand Nature’s awesome design. The engineer then went on to develop cooler and quieter running fans for PC’s by integrating design elements that mimicked those of the owl’s feathers; solving a computer hardware issue that had long gone unresolved.

I’m not saying that I’ve made such a profound observation. However, I’ve seen how life’s dealing of unrelated events can come full circle and result in brilliant harmony to the observant.

So how are my two passions similar? What does endurance running have to do with SEO? It turns out a lot!!! Here is a quick list with some examples:

1. Running marathons requires commitment to training and gradual improvement in overall endurance to realize a long term goal. Anyone that knows SEO also knows that overnight results just don’t happen. To realize long-term, sustainable organic growth an SEO campaign must consistently optimize and improve several components both on-site and off-site over several weeks and months (or years!). The life cycle to optimize a site is a long one. To endure a 26.2 mile running race requires the same commitment.
2. Marathon training requires the testing and calibration of different techniques, especially if you want to make substantial improvements over time. Sure, anyone can “optimize” their website by improving the meta title and meta description, building a few external links, and adding fresh content on a regular basis. Although you’ll likely see results they probably won’t be enough to consistently place you among the top 3 pages of the SERPs. If you want to break into the top positions then you MUST do more. You must turn to technical issues effecting site crawlability and rankings. Look at duplicate content issues, utilize the proper robots.txt protocol for your site, clean up broken pages and pass link value with 301 redirects, etc.. The same applies with marathon running. If you want to break into the top percentile of runners you MUST incorporate speed training on a weekly basis, do hill work (uggghhh it’s terrible, but worth it!), rehab injuries immediately, and stretch and ice on a regular basis. You can’t just add content and call it a day, much like I can run the same route at the same speed each day and expect to win.
3. Marathoner’s are a bit messed up in the head. Yeah, that’s right. There’s something weird going on in my noggin. What do I mean? Well, just think about waking up at 5am on a Sunday morning to go run 26.2 miles. Get it? It’s a strange addiction to personal challenges and the willingness to die for a $5 medal at the finish line. That’s not an exaggeration. At every race I’ve been in the ambulance crew has always been busy. All of the passionate SEO’ers that I’ve met have a similar mentality. At odd hours of the night and on weekends they work through a challenging environment to obtain a goal. They know that they must take several steps to get there. They also know they could screw up along the way and not reach their goal. But they take that risk and accept the consequences and go for it. I don’t win any money for finishing a race. I do however get extreme satisfaction. The same goes for my SEO work. I usually don’t have anything tangible to walk away with. Just a self-congratulating “job well done!”

I’ll be writing plenty more about this topic and I hope that SEO’ers and marathon runners alike decide to follow. For the time being though I want you to think about what you’re passionate about and consideration the interrelated nature of them. How does one inspire the other?

My blogging is done for the day. Time to go lace up the shoes

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Site owners should think about URLs as if they were name tags. Imagine going to a big convention, SMX for example, and walking around a room full of search marketing industry experts that you want to meet. You notice from a distance that they are all wearing name tags so you figure that’s a sure way to casually introduce yourself and begin jaw flapping.

As you get closer though you notice that on the name tags aren’t written clear, descriptive names. No first and last name. No recognizable language like “Tim” and “Bill”. Instead you find name tags with “&=ses1246396″ and “%rev%false_34973″. Suddenly you realize you can’t decipher who they are and what they do by their name tag. You may recognize the person if you’ve seen s/he before but if you haven’t, well… no dice. The only way you’ll be able to find out who they are is to dig a bit, ask some questions, and eventually piece together a story that helps you identify that person.

Same rule applies for a website. The URL is your site name tag. If it doesn’t clearly state with static, keyword-centric phrases what the content of the page is about then it isn’t serving it’s optimal purpose. No where is this more evident then in the top organic search results. It’s your opportunity to introduce yourself and what you’re about at the front door. With static, keyword-centric URLs iterating primary and secondary keyword phrases in your targeted landing page then the combination of a descriptive URL and matching meta data will greatly increase the click-thru of your organic listing.

Below are some rules to live by with URL naming:

1. Iterate a targeted, primary keyword phrase in each URL
2. Keep URLs as short and descriptive as possible
3. Use hyphens or underscores between keywords
4. Minimize the use of dynamic variables and session IDs
5. If you have hundreds or thousands of pages then organize them into keyword targeted sub-domains
6. If manual re-write isn’t possible then use mod_rewrite to serve static looking URLs to users and spiders
7. If re-directing from an old URL to a new URL then do so with 301 permanent redirects to pass link value and ensure the new URL is indexed

More to come on URLs, especially for e-commerce sites!

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