How to Learn SEO and Secure your Dream Job in the Field?

Either you have heard about SEO a lot and are highly fascinated by this term or you are vaguely aware of it but you know there can be a career in it and are interested in starting up with it, there is one essential thing in both the cases that you’ll first have to learn it and have pioneered yourself in all the basic tricks of the trade.

SEO made its place way back in the early 90’s when people started up with online business and internet marketing came into being; however, SEO in India developed much later than that. And since it made its place out here quite late, it still has a lot of opportunity, and once you have mastered the tricks of the trade, you can easily start up as a professional and be successful.

But the thing is, where to start learning it from, whom to consult, what to start up with, and several such questions keep creating dilemmas for the beginners like you. As internet marketing gained popularity, several universities across the globe started providing special degrees for it and some even included special section on SEO, then there came several workshops on the virtual sphere and several similar of them in the real world also.

And of course, how can anyone forget the Google’s marketing team and famous internet marketers delivering informative speeches and conducting seminars and conferences across the globe. But again, one can’t forget that these didn’t reach India yet and even if some of the industry bigwigs have ever tried coming to India, hearing them have been beyond the reach of the beginners.

Where will the beginners go then? Well, there’s nothing to worry, there have been several other beginners like you who did start from scratch, learned the skills, secured really good jobs, and finally gained the success that they had dreamed of. So, let’s get back to the same question – where should you start learning the skill from?

Of course you can think of joining some online courses, but then they will cost you a lot and especially when you are just a beginner, there is no point spending so much and again, you may end up joining up some wrong course, so it won’t be a right idea.

Here are few possible places wherefrom you can start learning Search Engine Optimization:

First, internet search is the first place to start up with, start searching for search phrases like “learning SEO”, “SEO basics” etc, and go through the pages that you find in the search results. This will make you aware of some of the basic things about it and you’ll at least have a direction to walk on to.

Second, go to SEO forums, these are internet forums where several experts, professionals, and amateurs come together and share their ideas. This is indeed the best place to begin with your optimization education. You’ll find several experts of the field posting their researches, experiences, ideas, and findings out here. By reading all these informative content you’ll surely gain a lot. Then, you’ll find beginners like you asking questions related to specific topics.

Once you become a member of an SEO forum you too will get to ask out all your queries and confusions and your questions will get answered by the members of the forum. You will even get experts’ suggestions and tips that will prove really beneficial.

Apart from regular question and answer threads, you will also find job opportunities, current trends, industry specific breaking new, and other information from an SEO forum. Then there are blogs and tutorials that the forums offer their members to go through and participate in. And finally, joining an SEO forum proves highly encouraging as you get to interact with several many people who also went through or are going through similar difficulties as you are, they will definitely help you out as well as boost your confidence. Again, there are some other kinds of competitions and activities out there, participating in which will further boost your confidence.

Third, you can go through the several online blogs providing SEO guidance free of cost, again, there are several sites where you can download books for free, you can try out downloading books on internet marketing and search engine optimization and read them thoroughly.

By executing above mentioned ideas, you can surely become an expert in internet marketing and optimization and soon secure your dream job in the field.

Crucial SEO Facts to Stay Safe from Future Panda Updates

This year, on February 23, Wednesday, Google’s Panda came about like an avalanche swooping up all the big and small businesses from the land of Google, where they were eagerly around to be seen by their would be customers.

Well, any idea why all of a sudden Panda came up with such a heartless hooligan like attitude toward the webmasters?

How about answering this question in the words of Google? So, this is what Google has to say about Panda Update that proved catastrophic for the webmasters:-

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites – sites which are low-value, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites – sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, and thoughtful analysis and so on. It is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

This was what it mentioned in its blog.

Well, finally the avalanche came and went away taking away several big and small businesses with it; however, it gave some interesting and crucial SEO facts on the basis of which the SEOs and webmasters can stay safe from further attacks from Panda.

Here are those crucial SEO facts which you need to keep in mind for the safety from any such Panda attacks in the future:-

• Be Alert All the Time
So you think that Panda attack is over? And as you have played safe, you’ll be safe and sound even in the future? Well, then you need to straighten up your back and be alert as it wasn’t a momentary attack and you should be aware of the fact that Google is very particular about the improvements in its algorithm and it keeps updating them. And according to the sources, this year itself, it brought about 550 new changes in its algorithm. So be ready to face some more of them in the future too.

• Relevancy is Essential
If your site offers relevant and high quality content, you are going to be safe and will even be rewarded by Google. So keep your site pages relevant by every means and when it comes to keeping the site relevant, you need to take care of everything that includes the keywords, site’s overall theme, and the main content which consists of words, images, video, links, and all other things.

• Quality has a Role to Play
Any idea why the sites like eHow and others from Demand Media, Buzzle, EzineArticles, Associated Content and many others got highly reprimanded by Panda? Haven’t these sites and many like these been doing really good over several years? Well, of course, these sites did very fine job over the years and also offered wonderful and high-quality content but along with the goodies they had, there were baddies also, i.e. these sites also offered lot of low-quality stuff along with the good quality ones which proved fatal for them. Panda punished several article directories because of the low quality content in them. It is noteworthy that EzineArticles and the likes of it have started deleting away the low quality stuffs and has even made their article submission procedure more strict and proper.

• The value of the Links from the Article Directories have Lowered
Well, much before Panda got loosened by Google, it already started behaving rock strict with the links from the article directories because of the low quality content offered by them. But with the attack from Panda, the value of these links went down further. However, EzineArticles has improved its standards now and its bouncing back is very likely.

• Authority Juice is the Savior
Authority sites are revered a lot by Google. it is especially because of the trustworthy content offered by these sites which make people trust them and hence these sites rank really well in the SERPs of Google.

Thus, if you are writing articles, it will be advisable that you do not submit those articles on to the article directories and instead try out the top authority sites like WebProNews, SiteProNews, SearchEngineJournal, PromotionWorld, and other similar sites.  It is true that it will be very less likely to get chance to be submitted to these sites but then these get higher value from Google, so all your efforts will prove worthwhile.

• Social Media has a Role to Play
Well, social media indeed has a role to play and Google does take such sites like Facebook and Twitter quite seriously, if not why did it ever thought of brining up its own social networking service Google+? Well, Google knows it very well and this is why it is important for you too to be active on the social sites for the success of your online business.

• Advertisements & Images on your site Decides your site’s Destiny
Sites with too many advertisements and images are detested by Google and such sites are more harassed by Panda. So try keeping balanced number of advertisements and images on your site and also be sure that they are related to your site content and not irrelevant and out of nowhere.

And images too can have adverse impact. So do not clutter up your site with too many images instead try maintaining a perfect balance between the written content and images. Moreover, lesser images won’t harm your and would be better so try keeping them as less as possible. And be sure that they are relevant to the content.

• Don’t Forget Videos … they are Google’s First Love!
Any idea why YouTube and Metacafe and other such video oriented sites were not hit by Panda update? It is simply because Google has a soft corner for the videos, and if you will try checking out, you’ll find that Google always offered better ranking to the Video oriented sites, even before Panda came into being. So it would be better if you add YouTube videos to your website. And if possible create your own videos and add them along with your site content.

• Content on your Blog
The trouble is that most people tend to post very small posts on their blog which are not liked by Google, so if you happen to post smaller blog posts then balance them by posting some longer posts as well.