How does one "master" SEO?

[amru82]

Hello! I have been reading around and not once have I stumbled upon the advice of "mastering SEO" as part of having success in your journey. It does make sense; however, how does one "master" SEO? What is the criteria?

As far as I can tell, keyword research and on-page SEO is part of it. Technical SEO is another part. What else? Also, how do you go about learning technical SEO? I've always assumed you need some programming skills with that. If so, what are those skills? And does anyone have any good resources/starting point?

Thanks!

 

[DanSkippy]

@amru82 Did you read the Digital Strategy Crash Course? Defenitly worth the read.

 

[secretagentdad]

Here’s my list in order of how helpful it was to me personally.

Seo book - Arron wall is a great writer and amazing seo. Found his book at a borders book store back in the day.
He’s still relevant today but a bit cagey about outing.

Traffic think tank. - not free but best gurutards in the business. The partners are all legit geniuses.

Digital strategy crash course is great but I think it could probably use some updating and less focus on checklist style seo and more focus on how to build and harvest brand equity for rankings.


Creeping on journals here and in the /r/juststart reddit is my primary way of coming up with new theories to test.

@Ryuzaki In particular has really well organized information dense content with a lot of data you can draw your own conclusions from.


Twitter is cancer that will convince you of dumb bullshit and result in you learning a bunch of made up words that some content marketing department contrived to create some pointless differentiation.

Same with all the self serving vendor blogs for the most part.


Edit - Almost forgot, I’ve been creeping on @shaunm a lot lately. He does everything super transparently and his content is as current as it gets. You can sort his content by date and watch the impact of various strategies he’s tried over time.
Also kinda getting a man crush over the no nonsense Brit style. Its really tolerable by YouTube standards.

 

[Timmy22]

You're currently looking for "the lay of the land." That's why your questions are so vague and broad I'm surprised anyone is bothering to answer. Read this first: Digital Strategy Crash Course. Then you'll start to have an idea of the right questions to be asking.

This is what you sound like to me: "What is a car? I know a car has tires, a body, and an engine, but what else? What can I read to learn about a car?" It's literally the stupidest thread I've read on here. I advocate for it being deleted.

 

[Ryuzaki]

As far as I can tell, keyword research and on-page SEO is part of it. Technical SEO is another part. What else?

I'd say SEO has 3 major disciplines:

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
3. Technical SEO

Some people would say Keyword Research is it's own thing but I'd call it a part of On-Page. Some people would call it part of "On-SERP" SEO, but they're also just trying to come up with some new "___ SEO" name they can attach to themselves. Sadly, some are catching on. On-SERP makes sense when you think about rich snippets and featured snippets and all of that.

The above 3 is the order you should learn them in too. And with something like Wordpress, you don't need Technical SEO if you don't try to get clever. Just let the CMS do the job and you won't have Tech SEO problems. Wordpress + don't use Tags ever and you'll be fine. I've shot myself in the foot gloriously when tinkering around, and that's when you learn Technical SEO. As a triage to stop the blood and cash from pouring out of the veins. Better to never need it.

I'd bundle Page Speed Optimization up with Technical SEO, by the way.

 

[gasmonkeygarage]

I will have to some degree,disagree with secreteagentdad. Aaronwall,viperchill is also cool but also,on twitter there are some cool guys,@tehseowner, is some one who know his stuff,other than that everything else is noise.

 

[amru82]

@amru82 Did you read the Digital Strategy Crash Course? Defenitly worth the read.

Yes, I've read it a while ago. But at that time, to me at least, it looked like beginner to intermediate stuff. This is why I was trying to understand what people meant with "mastering" SEO. Guess like most things in life, the "boring" and simple strategies are the best. There is no secret sauce to being a "master", just knowing the basics and being good at them.

Here’s my list in order of how helpful it was to me personally.

Seo book - Arron wall is a great writer and amazing seo. Found his book at a borders book store back in the day.
He’s still relevant today but a bit cagey about outing.

Traffic think tank. - not free but best gurutards in the business. The partners are all legit geniuses.

Digital strategy crash course is great but I think it could probably use some updating and less focus on checklist style seo and more focus on how to build and harvest brand equity for rankings.


Creeping on journals here and in the /r/juststart reddit is my primary way of coming up with new theories to test.

@Ryuzaki In particular has really well organized information dense content with a lot of data you can draw your own conclusions from.


Twitter is cancer that will convince you of dumb bullshit and result in you learning a bunch of made up words that some content marketing department contrived to create some pointless differentiation.

Same with all the self serving vendor blogs for the most part.


Edit - Almost forgot, I’ve been creeping on @shaunm a lot lately. He does everything super transparently and his content is as current as it gets. You can sort his content by date and watch the impact of various strategies he’s tried over time.
Also kinda getting a man crush over the no nonsense Brit style. Its really tolerable by YouTube standards.

Gotcha. I'll grab a copy of that book and see what it is all about.

I'll be honest, I do creep around /juststart and the journals in here but mostly look at the stats and not take the time to read the actual meat (aside from Ryuzaki's threads). I should start doing that and pay more attention to their strategies and perhaps start implementing them myself.

You're currently looking for "the lay of the land." That's why your questions are so vague and broad I'm surprised anyone is bothering to answer. Read this first: Digital Strategy Crash Course. Then you'll start to have an idea of the right questions to be asking.

This is what you sound like to me: "What is a car? I know a car has tires, a body, and an engine, but what else? What can I read to learn about a car?" It's literally the stupidest thread I've read on here. I advocate for it being deleted.

Wow, you don't have to be so salty bro. If you feel like my thread is useless, feel free to not reply. Also, just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean it has to disappear. Nice redneck mentality right there. Jesus.

Not to mention that you literally decided to join the discussions yesterday, and already behaved like a retarded child going about and trying to flame me, CCarter, and CashCowAdv. All in the span of two days. I'm pretty sure if you keep it up, a lot of people will be advocating for you to get lost. You've been lurking for 6 years. Could have used all those years to build some manners.

I'd say SEO has 3 major disciplines:

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-Page SEO
3. Technical SEO

Some people would say Keyword Research is it's own thing but I'd call it a part of On-Page. Some people would call it part of "On-SERP" SEO, but they're also just trying to come up with some new "___ SEO" name they can attach to themselves. Sadly, some are catching on. On-SERP makes sense when you think about rich snippets and featured snippets and all of that.

The above 3 is the order you should learn them in too. And with something like Wordpress, you don't need Technical SEO if you don't try to get clever. Just let the CMS do the job and you won't have Tech SEO problems. Wordpress + don't use Tags ever and you'll be fine. I've shot myself in the foot gloriously when tinkering around, and that's when you learn Technical SEO. As a triage to stop the blood and cash from pouring out of the veins. Better to never need it.

I'd bundle Page Speed Optimization up with Technical SEO, by the way.

I'd say my on-page optimization is pretty on point. Same goes with keyword research. However, I've never built links so maybe that is where I should start looking at next.

As far as technical is concerned, I didn't know I should completely disregard it if I'm using Wordpress. Also, thanks for the tip of avoiding tags. I was actually just looking to add them. I'm thinking of splitting one of my categories into two subcategories, and I didn't know if the article should be part of both the category and the subcategory. I thought of just keeping one category and using tags instead. Guess I'll scratch that off.

Thank you for the reply.

I will have to some degree,disagree with secreteagentdad. Aaronwall,viperchill is also cool but also,on twitter there are some cool guys,@tehseowner, is some one who know his stuff,other than that everything else is noise.

Will check him out. Thanks man.

 

[illmasterj]

I used to read things. Then I started building things. I have learned infinite amounts more by building.

When you build your own stuff, you care about it and find solutions or learn valuable lessons when things go wrong. Your competitors take your rankings, so you learn what they are doing and replicate or improve upon it. You break your sites by making changes that the gurus say will work, but it didn't so you need to roll it back and find a way. And so on.

You don't get this knowledge by signing up to a paid community or buying an ebook or some other bewlshit.

Build.

I don't know what your day job is, but I allocated a % of my earnings into experimenting. That budget was for vendors on forums and random Skype accounts and all that. I viewed it as a black hole but as it turns out a lot of these vendors do great stuff, and I've learned a lot from that too.

But at that time, to me at least, it looked like beginner to intermediate stuff. This is why I was trying to understand what people meant with "mastering" SEO. Guess like most things in life, the "boring" and simple strategies are the best. There is no secret sauce to being a "master", just knowing the basics and being good at them.

This is a quality lesson I find in the IM game it always feels as though the next guy knows more. But a lot of the time "winning" just looks like executing on something that works "fairly well". Mediocre execution works a lot better than the perfect plan that never sees the light of day.

 

[bernard]

I dunno, if you really want to master SEO, you should probably get a job at an agency with a market leader.

Someone like Distilled in London, who were the shit when I used to do SEO.

I think a problem is that SEO, like all mature business, has splintered into many different subfields, like Analytics, outreach, technical seo, speed optimization, content planning and production etc. What is SEO then? I would say it is primarily a full suite service sold to businesses. It doesn't really make sense for an in-house position anymore. I see more positions today labelled as "growth hacker", "web manager", etc.