What a SEO Professional should know

To be a good SEO you need to know a lot of things and to be a professional SEO you need to know them well. I sometimes see people calling themselves “SEO Experts” looking to make a quick buck …

Let’s just list the things I consider that a good SEO must know:

HTML

As an SEO, knowing HTML is a must. You need to see and understand how the search engines are reading the source code of the web pages. If you can produce nice web sites in Notepad and type HTML without looking at the keyboard then it’s good enough

CSS

You don’t need to be a CSS-expert but you need to know all the basics fluently. Tasks can include transforming a JS menu to a CSS menu. Styling heading tags is a daily routine.

Web Design / Web Development

You should be able to produce nice web sites from scratch without help. At least a basic knowledge is needed and you can outsource the design tasks and use CMS‘es for your or your clients sites. To be honest, I myself suck at graphics. That’s the major reason why there are no images on this site. But you don’t really need graphics in your SEO work.

How search engines work

You need to know how search engines rank pages. That’s a simple sentence but you need to observe, study and test until you know and have a good grasp on how it works. It is a plus if you also know the differences between the major search engines in their ranking algorithms.

Keyword Research

You need to know how to find the best keywords by looking at popularity, competitiveness and relevance. This includes working with KEI.

Trust with Google

A basic understanding is required on what the sandbox is (a kind of filter) and is not (penalty for all new sites) and you need to know some basic things on how a site can gain more trust (trusted links etc.).

Knowing and understanding on-page factors

When you review or build a site you should have a checklist to tick off all the on-page factors (perhaps this will help). You should also know which CMSes are the best to use for different purposes.

Ability to write and craft link baits

A good SEO is a also a good writer. If you cannot write you cannot improve a web sites copy, make good guides, articles and other good content which serves as link baits. A good writer can get links much more easily and if you despise writing perhaps you should look for another job.

Basic knowledge of the social networks

With link baits you work with social networks (digg, reddit, furl, del.icio.us, netscape etc.) and you need to know the basics on how they work so that you can use them.

How to redirect pages

There is only one proper way of redirecting a page or site, the 301 redirect. You need to know how to do it in .htaccess, PHP and ASP and when to do it.

Using long-tail

The long-tail of search are all the non-competetive big volume of search queries you will get when using a lot of unique good content properly. You need to understand how this works and properly utilize it.

Handling duplicate content

Part of a SEOs job is removing duplicate content on a site. Any content that shows up same for more than 1 URL should be fixed. This includes the non-www redirect. Example with default WordPress.

Mod_rewrite with .htaccess

This is something you really need to know in order to make those clean nice URLs. A real bonus if you know how to do it on a windows server with IIS (I don’t …).

Link power and how it works (PageRank)

You need to understand such things like how link power flows through a site (so you can make good internal navigations) and how search engines uses links as a voting mechanism and how it works. This includes working with online SEO tools and querying search engines for measurements. You need to know the difference between toolbar PageRank and real PageRank and that PageRank is just one out of 100 factors used in ranking.

Link metrics

For each link there are several factors such as the anchor, link position, link relevance, age, surrounding text, C-class IPs and more. This is also important to understand when you start to build links.

Link Building methods

There are probably over 20 strategies in getting links. I listed some effective ones over here. You need to know them and know how to work with them. As an SEO it should be easy for you to get good links, links are vital for SEO.

Basic knowledge of penalties

To know what factors that can get give penalties or banning in the search engines are very important. If you don’t know these you can make big mistakes, even unintentionally.

Knowledge of and ability to set up backlink generators

As an SEO you need link power in order to power your network of sites, especially if you have many. You should have at least 5 of these running for a big network of 100 sites IMHO.

Understanding the supplemental results and know how to get out

Things like unique title and meta tags, placing big header information at the end of source code with CSS-P, deep links, better internal navigation, removing duplicate content and other factors has to be understood and used to take this action.

Basics of PHP / MySQL

Many sites are written with PHP and using MySQL. You should have a basic knowledge on how it works (in fact I know very little PHP) so that you can adjust existing code for better SEO. PHPMyAdmin can be your best friend when dealing with the database.

Statistics

Your web sites stats are a very important and useful tool, you need to understand how to use it in your SEO.

Competitive Research

You need to know what your competitors are doing, how they get their links and how well optimized their sites are. (this one was added by Lee Beirne in the comment below)

Other things

Google sitemaps, robots.txt and more.

Connections with people

If you are going big and plan to build an empire of own sites and handle a large amount of clients you should have a full list of partners, it will be needed. These includes Web Designers, Content Writers, Link Builders, Programmers, Directory Submitters, Cheap Brokers of PR 6-8 links, buddies that help you in social network sites, SEO Experts that you can ask for advice and more. I currently have 45 partners that I have been using on my list and most of them are experts in a specific field. Many of my partners are located in India or other eastern cheap countries (yes, you can find real good people there). But before you start to use a partner you need to know and understand the thing he is doing and test them on some of your own sites before using them on “real” work. Make sure to inspect and reject work that is not proper. The ideal is that they do the same thing you could have done but you use them to save time.

Did I miss anything?

I didn’t cover marketing or SEM here such as branding, PPC or creating hype - that’s a whole different big field.

Learn more and research on those area you feel you need to learn more on. Did you know all? Good! You are now a Level 5 SEO. Now you need to work on becoming a level 6!

I know all the above subjects, some areas more than others but I have actually stopped providing optimization services as announced here and I am now specialized in link building. If you need help in getting links, feel free to contact me.

PS: I do plan to write an SEO book in Swedish starting at end of 2007.

55 responses » Leave a comment

Halfdeck said on October 28, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Thanks for the checklist Jim. I’d say you should also know how to combine CURL, AJAX, and MYSQL.
agaton said on October 28, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Really nice list! This is my handbook on my way to become a really good SEO-expert.

I waiting on your book, IÂ´m sure it gonna be all SEO:s best friend.
Abhishek Tripathi said on October 29, 2006 at 4:43 am
Yet another awesome post Jim!

Readers DIGG IT

Abhishek
Quetivity said on October 29, 2006 at 4:51 am
Very informative Jim, good post.
Mong said on November 2, 2006 at 11:21 am
You missed very important point which is necessary for every seo professional that is ” Patience ”
ituloy angsulong said on November 7, 2006 at 6:25 am
Wow. And here I thought I knew about basic SEO. Guess I need to get started on the other items then… Thanks!
theMarketingCard said on November 8, 2006 at 4:37 pm
SEO industry constantly changes, so constant learning/research is also a part of SEO.
Top Web Site Tips said on November 10, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I like your point on “connections with people”.

I outsource a lot of website work, however I have a tendancy to keep all of the SEO work to myself. Probably a bad choice, only so many hours to the day and a lot of it can be done cheaply by other parties.

I think I’m going to have to give that a lot of thought, I turn away way to much work!!!
Lee Beirne said on November 20, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Competitive Research!! i think this is one of the keys to being “good” at SEO - you need to know what your compeitors are doing also and how well optimized there sites are.

I totally agree with you on the people that wanna make a quick buck like at one of the forums i go to there is this person and because he ranks number 1 on Google for some obscure keyword he classes himself as an “SEO Specialist”

Get real lol NO ONE searches on those terms he ranked for. When i was speaking with Dan Thies its true what he said - if people re not searching on that term you cannot class that s a keyword.

Great post
Jim Westergren said on November 28, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Thanks Lee,

you are right.

I have added Competitive Research to the list.
Lee Beirne said on November 30, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Here’s another one for you Jim.

PageRank Bleed.

Why give away PR when there is no need to?

Lee
Jim Westergren said on December 2, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Lee,

Why give away PR when there is no need to?

Why stop giving away PR when there is no need to?

If you often link to other bloggers you will find that magically it will be much easier to get links from bloggers. Trust me.
Lee Beirne said on December 11, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Oh no Jim, i totally agree with you on that side, perhaps i never explained right.

Ok lets say for example you have a PR 6 static/ecommerce site, 99% of the time you will have a Privacy Policy or an About Us page. There is no need for them pages to have PR. As you know the strongest PR comes from the Index page and when you cut of the PR supply to the “About Us” page it will increase the strength of the PR on the Index page.

We don’t want to and don’t need to rank or even need PR for those pages right? so why give it to them?

Lee
Decent11HosING said on December 18, 2006 at 12:55 am
Hey Jim I just wanted to update You On My Website Rankings. It’s been about 4 Months Since I started Reading Your Site & SEO Articles and Putting Your SEO Mastry to work. My Hosting Site is up to a Google PR 4 from a 0.
My hosting site is only about six months old so it is quite New.

I just Like to Thank You, I really Appreciate All Your Helpful Knowledge About SEO.

It’s Really all about the time You put in to SEO for it to be successful. I highly Recommend You read all Jim Westergren Website & Articles it’s well worth it.

Thanks
Jim Westergren said on December 18, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Lee,

Oh, I see what you mean. I always use rel=nofollow on such pages, check this blog for example.

and when you cut of the PR supply to the “About Us” page it will increase the strength of the PR on the Index page.

It will not increase the PR strength on the Index page BUT your other pages will get a higher share of the PR that is being distributed.
bgwebmast said on December 21, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Nice checklist. Like other activities, SEO is a lifetime education course. I didn’t find a “Writing good content” in the checklist, is it by default for SEO?
Jim Westergren said on December 21, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Thanks. Well I wrote “Ability to write”, it falls under that point.
Swetlana Maßat said on December 22, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Very good and great site with very good look and perfect information…i like it
Jonathan said on December 31, 2006 at 12:58 am
Thanks for that tremendous article!
Exaltinfo Hosting said on January 24, 2007 at 7:45 am
Hello Jim,

Hope this article may bring seo’s attention about their skills. Hope we got a good resource to sharpen our skills onceagain.

yes, we observed the same what you explained to Mr.Lee. So do we need to use rel=nofollow on blogs?

Thanks for good article.
hong kong hotel said on February 9, 2007 at 5:11 pm
it is useful tips for those who want to be SEO expert !
Bagi Zoltán said on February 11, 2007 at 11:01 am
Hi Jim,

It is a realy valuable specification for a SEO. Telling the truth I feel the growing importance of better php knowledge day by day. Nowadays this language is really popular, and more and more site base on this.

I think a good SEO must be a programmer as well, what do you think?
Jim Westergren said on February 11, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Hi Bagi,

Well I did write “Basics of PHP”, for more advanced I prefer to outsource than spending the time learning.
Bagi Zoltán said on February 11, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Yes Jim, I think you are, but I haven’t found my man so far although a promising php programmer appeared on the horizont.

Otherwise I think your blog is excellent I always enjoy reading the posts. Congrats!
MrWize said on February 18, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Yes, I think You have missed a lot of things. Why only PHP/MySQL? A lot of companies are running on different techniques like MS SmallBusinessServer, Lotus Notes, EpiServer etc.

Shoule a SEO then advise them to change system? or should the SEO adjust to whatever thechnique the customer use?

Just my €0.02

/Patrik Berggren
Jim Westergren said on February 19, 2007 at 12:01 pm
MrWize,

I wrote PHP/MySQL as in my opinion that is what almost all is using. In Sweden I have met clients with ASP and windows servers but that does not seem to be common in the US. I wrote what I consider an SEO should know. A person would not need to know MS SmallBusinessServer, Lotus Notes, EpiServer etc in order to do SEO but some basic PHP/MySQL is needed as that is almost always used.

If the client of an SEO uses another system which the SEO don’t know my recommendation is to get help on that.

I consider it more important for SEOs to learn for example advanced link building methods than how to work with 4 different servers.

Just my 2 cents.
der-vertrag said on March 18, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Great for this i search many hours,but now i found it here

Thanks
verkaufsagent said on March 20, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I think these blog is really useful for new comers and Excellent resource list.
Peter Andersen said on March 23, 2007 at 9:30 am
I have to agree with all of the above Jim. As a multimedia-design student, we do cover most of the above areas, the only stuff left out is learning about search engines.

Knowing the above is in my opinion mandatory, if one wants to become proficient at it.

About the php/mysql thing. I must say that I do agree. A major percentage of all sites with dynamic content are run on apache servers, most use php/mysql. Yes, some still use ASP.net, but more and more are converting to PHP. When that is said, one might also notice the fact that by knowing php/mysql at a general level, one will also be able to figure out how asp works.

Excellent information found here.

Regards.
Bedava SMS said on April 10, 2007 at 6:14 pm
This is a useful help for newbies.
muzyka said on April 17, 2007 at 11:46 am
it is useful tips for those who want to be SEO expert !
Beginners Guide to SEO said on April 19, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Thanks Jim great article. As I mentioned I’m a SEO Newbie, I can see I have a long way to go, I have knowledge on some of the topics you mentioned, some I’m just learning about, and some of those I definitely have no idea. So I better keep my as* reading SEO Blogs.
Maik said on April 20, 2007 at 1:25 am
Thanx for this very useful and informative article, nice work!
Nathan said on April 27, 2007 at 7:13 am
Yet another great article! Thanks Jim for all this information. The information about Page Rank being shared by all the web pages and how we can use itt he most way is really helpful. This blog is really helpful for the beginners in SEO and also for those who want to be SEO experts.
vikas nagle said on April 27, 2007 at 7:51 am
Thanx…you have provided very nice peice of information…its really helpful to become a skilled SEO professional….!!
Rolf Beckmann said on May 12, 2007 at 8:20 am
Quite good information I think. Useful to rise your pagerank and become a seo
svt said on May 14, 2007 at 5:31 am
MrWize you are right, MySQL and PHP is not the only one up there, but let’s don’t forget , SEO is not directly related to knowledge of runing servers and such. Do you really think that one must know inside out every server or DB system in order to bring the website running on it to to the top3 position ?
F-1 drivers do not necessarily need to know how the gearbox is constructed in order to switch the gears , they know what is wrong when they hear the sound of it but its up to the other team members and mechanic to fix it. The driver need to know how to drive and win the race - and that is his job and expertise. He may look at the sky and say “ those tires will not work today we need slicks” or whatever, but that does not mean he needs to know which particular slicks are the best at this moment, you won’t see him jumping under the car to swap them either.
Just like Jim said, there is just so much involved, that to be able to do SEO professionally you will always need other experts.
svt said on May 14, 2007 at 5:38 am
No big deal but just noticed that the url from my post above some how went south of where it was intendet to be.
Great blog Jim, thank’s
Dog said on June 27, 2007 at 3:31 am
Hi, I just print the information out and the list is really haelpful…thank you very much!
GKD said on July 5, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Great article Jim

I have come across lots of seo service sites that advertise they can get you to number one in the search engines in a couple of months. Why do so many webmasters believe this?
szkolenia said on August 30, 2007 at 11:44 pm
You missed very important point which is necessary for every seo professional that is ” Patience
rugs said on September 15, 2007 at 1:12 am
Thank you for the informative site. I know a lot people that are trying to get this kind of information for a while. But all the time they are finding the same things over and over and over. No site has been putting all the same information into the same place. Thank you for going the extra mile and including all of this into a concise website. I will have to send some people your way so they can get the information that they have been looking for. Do you have any other information that would be helpful for them? Or any other subjects that you have been covering on any of your other sites that I or people I know might find useful? I will keep checking back to see if I can find something that I could use.
Śmieszne filmy said on September 21, 2007 at 6:20 am
Thanx for this very useful and informative article, nice work!
Amit Bhawani said on October 7, 2007 at 7:55 am
Excellent points noted down, but regarding link bait i dont think every seo professional can do it.
baby said on November 11, 2007 at 4:20 am
I think there are a lot of things you need to know when it comes to SEO. There are not only a few that you should use. Like anything in life, you need to keep learning. When you stop learning, you stop growing. This goes with anything in life. Either it is personal or business. So I do not think there are just a few things that people should know about SEO. When I read over you site, I just got the feeling that a person can learn just these subjects and will do fine. It makes me feel like you are dismissing the rest of the subject as not important at all. I am not sure if this is how you feel or you just left out that feeling in your article. I would like to know what you think about this matter.
fine art paintings said on January 14, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Do you think it’s possible to become an effective SEO by mastering only the non-techie parts? Or you really can’t become a true SEO by heart when you miss any one or several of these?
Hängematten said on January 17, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Thank You for another very interesting article. It’s really good written and I fully agree with You on main issue, btw. I must say that I really enjoyed reading all of Your posts. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… it makes you think more. So please try to keep up the great work all the time. Greetings
seopractices said on January 18, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hey Jim, this is Gus from Costa Rica, I read your article a while ago. Now I came back to read it and found new important advices from you. I will like to be your seo partner too. Let me know, I’m sure we can work something benefical for both of us.
Tornador said on February 15, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Like anything in life, you need to keep learning. When you stop learning, you stop growing. This goes with anything in life. Either it is personal or business. So I do not think there are just a few things that people should know about SEO. When I read over you site, I just got the feeling that a person can learn just these subjects and will do fine.
Tony Murphy said on March 14, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Hi Jim,

Fantastic info as per many of your other posts.

If any budding SEO does not yet know HTML then may I recommend these nice HTML Tutorials

Anyone can learn using them.

cheers
Tony
seo guide said on March 16, 2008 at 3:06 am
Hi Jim, great article thanks. I have lost quite a few contracts because of lack of SEO Technical Knowledge. Can you recommend me some resources or books to learn about the subject:
PHP, Hosting, MySQL, ect. You know the kind of SEO technical knowledge one must have. Thanks in advance Jim.

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