I would like to share my perspective of how I arrived at and benefit from SEOmoz as an SEO non-professional. I started typing for students and doctors about 20 years ago so I could help out with the budget without putting my kids in daycare. I taught myself to program, creating custom screens, applications and data conversion/manipulation processes to add value to my services. I went on to win some good contracts and created work for other moms to do at home. When I won my first corporate contract I told myself, “well, maybe I can find a job when this ends” and I have continued to say that for 20 years. I still own and operate DataPlus but I have a weakness: I grew a company and managed to stay busy through word of mouth and a couple of large corporate clients but I did no marketing. You can see how dangerous that is, especially when services are being sent offshore to perceived cheaper labor as they are. Thus my recent interest in SEO.
I knew being found on the web had to be a good thing since it’s the first, and usually only, place I go when I need a service provider. But when I checked, my site came up nowhere! What good is a website if nobody sees it? I searched the web for help and arrived at SEOnoz. I found Rand Fishkin’s “Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization.” It was pretty much Greek to me but I stuck with it and systematically tried to understand and apply his advice. I learned about:
- Keyword research
- Targeted unique titles and Metadata
- Avoiding duplicate content
- Submitting to search engines
- Writing my content for functionality and accessibility
- Using keywords in my content
- How the spiders crawl my site
- Comparing my site to competitors
- Link building
- Nofollow and dofollow links
- Sitemaps
I submitted my site to all the search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing Local. I submitted my site to DMOZ several times but to no avail (I’m starting to get my feelings hurt). I delved into link building with a passion (actually got penalized a bit for too many links too quick). I check my stats regularly with Linkscape, RankTracker, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Local Reports, Stat Counter, and Link Popularity Tool. I test and retest little changes in content for better results.
When I made my first website with Microsoft Publisher back in 1995 I thought I was hot stuff! I blush.
I don’t claim to be an SEO expert but I have learned a lot and achieved some results. I appreciate the advice shared and being able to continue learning from the Blogs. Thank you SEOmoz.
