SEO Tips

I discovered a very interesting thread on Webmaster World from an experienced SEO Professional who decided who to pin two websites, competing in the same industry, with each other.

The first site was pushed using old school SEO practices, including paid and reciprocal links, content development, doorway pages, etc.

The second site was build in a more ‘organic way’ focussing on unique content, with no paid links or doorway pages, but with a blog, videos, blogs, RSS feeds and Twitter integration.

Guess which one is earning money and getting quality Google traffic? You got it, the “SEO’ed Site.”

The forum member wrote:

Site 1 (AKA “SEO’ed Site”): after just 3 months it was skyrocketing past some pretty hefty competition with traffic increasing well each month. The site was making £10,000+ a month for the last six months we had it and just sold for a rather nice figure.
Site 2 (AKA “Quality Site”): has struggled to rank anywhere, even for it’s own name, and traffic has been stagnant since the outset – it made a loss for the first 8 months and made just under £3000 in it’s best month which was last month.

My two cents: Although the results of this case study are quite interesting (depressing for a white hat SEO), I am not convinced that we can draw any conclusions of this. I believe that, depending on the industry and the degree of competition, you can be successful with a less aggressive/more organic SEO campaign. Additionally, I would not not include reciprocal linking with any random site and true doorway pages as part of “regular SEO practices”, as described in the thread.

I recommend to read all the details in the forum thread.

A quick follow-up to to my note about the increasing demand for search engine optimization specialists:

Tim Dineen, Online Marketing Manager at job search engine Indeed, found out that California is the no. 1 state for SEO jobs. Meaning: On the US west coast, you’ll find the highest density of job offers for Search Marketing professionals. His findings are based on an analysis of the @SEOjobs Twitter account (great idea, by the way!), which is populated via a feed from Indeed.

Here is his map:

Onward Search did a similar analysis, which was based on the SEMPO member roster – and came to the same conclusion.

I was curious to find out about the “demand” for SEO and did a quick (non scientific) research with Google’s great tool “Insights for Search”. As the chart shows, the search volume for the query “SEO” in California has been far above the national average in the last 90 days.

Conclusions: 1. There a lots of choices for California based businesses that are interested in hiring an SEO Consultant or SEO agency. 2. The competition among SEO professionals in this state will continue to increase. Hopefully, this will also lead to a more mature industry with higher education and ethics standards.

P.S. If you’re interested in becoming an SEO professional or are just curious to learn more about this industry, check out the following links:
- SEOmoz: How To Get An SEO Job?
- SEO Journal: 10 Tips To Making It In The SEO Community
- Onward Search: Where In The World Is SEO Talent?
- Reality SEO: SEO Salaries, Jobs And In-House Surve
- SEMPO: In-House Search Marketing Pays Well, But Not Dot Com Hype Levels

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I think most people in the industry agree that search engine optimization is both art and science. Although the SEO professionals have to adapt their techniques constantly due to the algorithm updates and changes of the big search engines, the many of the ‘core wisdoms’ in SEO remained the same over the last couple of years.

If your work in the SEO industry or are an SEO client, a webmaster or just web geek who is interested to learn how much he knows about Search Engine Optimization, check out my 8 favorite website to test your SEO knowledge:

SEOmoz Expert Quiz

SEOmoz Expert Quiz is the best online destination for testing your knowledge in search engine optimization, in my opinion. It includes 75 questions with a wide range of topics. You be awarded with a badge at the end. Depending on your final score, you’ll be an “SEO Novice” or “SEO Master”. Highly recommended.

SEO Test by SEMPO

The SEMPO SEO test is a good online quiz with some tricky questions. Although I expected that the official organization of Search Marketing professionals in the United States would have offered a more sophisticated test with a wider range of topics, it still give you a good idea where you stand with your SEO knowledge – especially, if you consider to enroll in one of the SEO or SEM online courses offered by the SEMPO institute. This online test has room for improvement with its 20 questions, but is still worth checking out.

Knowledge Tests By SEOconsultants.com

The Knowledge Tests by SEOconsultants offer 5 sets of questions for five different knowledge domains: “General”, “Google Guidelines”, HTTP Status Code”, “Internet History” and “Search Engine Trivia”. A good mix or simple and challenging questions. Answers come with useful explanations.

SEO & SEM Quiz by Vertical Leap

The SEO & SEM Quiz by the UK base search marketing company Vertical Leap is short and sweet – and requires some good insider knowledge about the search marketing industry. The 25 questions include some fun stuff, like “‘MSN Dude’ is a member of which forum?”. You’ll receive your score at the end, but unfortunately no explanation which the right answers are.

SEO Quiz by About.com

The SEO Quiz by About.com is a great online test which is embedded in the ‘web search’ section of About.com. Every question comes with a link list of topic related resources and related articles. This is a phantasitc quiz to test and expand your knowledge at the same time.

SEO Quiz by Webconfs.com

Webconfs.com, infamous portal for SEO tools and webmaster utilities, offers a good SEO Quiz with 10 questions. Despite its very generic design, the search engine optimization test includes some tricky questions and well-written, comprehensible explanations for the answers.

SEO Cartoon Quiz

The SEO Cartoon Quiz by Tel Aviv based internet marketing company AIMS is probably the most entertaining SEO test you’ll find on the world wide web. In the 15 ‘questions’, you have to guess what the cartoons represent. You don’t really test your own SEO knowledge – but it’s a lot of fun!

Needless to say that you need to take this tests with a grain of salt. Due to the fact-pace nature of the industry, SEO knowledge remains something fluid.

Did you find additional SEO online tests I should add to this list? Let me know!

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Duane Forrester, who runs the in-house SEO program for the MSN properties in Canada, the US and The Americas gave some great SEO advice in a post on Search Engine Land:

• Rankings are NOT metrics
• SEO should be baked in, not spread on top
• SEO is a game of inches, not miles—there’s no ONE thing that will make you a hero
• Usability trumps SEO—the user’s experience should always be the # 1 focus