I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach SEO mentally, and thus far, I’m pretty much equating it with my experience with keyword-based cpc advertising.

When I’m working in AdWords doing SEM, the mantra I’ve come to revere has been “think like the customer.” If you can learn how to put yourself in the shoes of someone searching for your product/service/information, selecting the proper keywords to bid on and writing the proper ad copy comes a lot more naturally, and the ads generally perform much better.

Thinking like the customer takes a little work, however. You need to identify the demographics of the individuals that are interested in your product/service/information (PSI from now on, for your sake and mine). Are you trying to sell to teens? The elderly? Men? Women? The type of person you’re advertising to matters, particularly when it comes to the type of copy you’re going to write.

Once you have a basic understanding of who your customer is, you can then think about the potential search terms your customers are going to use to find your PSI (stuff, from now on. PSI is a little lame). If your product has fairly good brand recognition, then name-type terms are going to be very valuable. On the other hand, if your product is new, or you are trying to create a niche, you’ll do a lot better selecting descriptive keywords that detail problems that your stuff solves or things that your stuff improves. For example, if you created a tool that makes your internet faster (pretending that no such tool exists) then you would bid on terms like “speed internet up” or “faster internet.”

Generally, the most valuable terms will have the most competition, which means higher bids. Thus, tools like the Overture Bid Tool are invaluable, because they let you see the top bids for the keyword you select. This high-bid, high-value rule isn’t always true, however, so I’ve learned not to be shy about putting keywords up that have no bidding whatsoever. You never know if there is virgin keyword territory that is yet untapped.

Now on to my point. It seems that SEO is much the same way. You figure out who your page is meant for. You figure out what keywords are going to draw those people in. Is your service revolutionary, and therefore niche-creating? Or is it about something more established, like insurance? Using these keywords, you then create content geared towards your target demographic (your site should look very different depending on whether it’s meant for senior citizen shuffleboard players or teenagers looking for snowboard tricks).

You should also prioritize which keywords are the most relevant to your site, and because those are the keywords that are most likely to have a lot of competition, you will have to work harder on link building using those keywords. Consider your time linkbuilding to be like money in keyword bidding. Generally, the better keywords cost more. Hey, time is money, right?

I’m still getting the details sorted out, but this is the best way I can make sense of things using my previous experience. Any other ideas that I might be missing?

Ok, so JazzcatSEO was actually indexed by Yahoo! and MSN a few days ago, but today is the first time I’ve seen this site show up in a Google search, and in the end, isn’t that the most important thing?

In other news, I was listening to SEO Rockstars on WebmasterRadio.fm, and Greg Boser mentioned how he has some domains that are just parked and not currently under development. He made an offhand comment about having content and links on those pages so that they could start to develop some link age and trust, despite their stagnant status. His idea was to use an API to put comment on the page, but I figure an ambitious webmaster could take a minute and throw up some unique content, add a couple of links to web properties that need some extra link-lovin’, get some Adsense up, and let it sit until they have time to work on it. At least this way, you get indexed, you start to develop some trust, and if things go really well, you might even make a few bucks off of Adsense on the parked domain.

I took this to heart, and after throwing up some Wordpress and Joomla installs on a bunch of new sites that I’m not currently working on, I did some limited interlinking between all the new sites, so if all goes as planned, by the time I’m ready to start development on these sites, they’ll already have some good links and a decent Pagerank. Now I just need to put up som content, rank it, and monetize the traffic. Easy business, right?

There’s a thread currently on the Digital Point forum talking about picking up SEO experience by doing pro bono work for charities and other nonprofits. This seems like a really great idea for several reasons.

The first reason is that you get to deal with people who are most likely just thankful for the help. While this isn’t necessarily universal, odds are that the nonprofit will be somewhat less demanding therefore less stressful to cut your teeth with.

Working with nonprofits, you’ll most likely be working in slightly less competetive spaces (unless you want to start spammin’ and jammin’ on PPC from the get-go). This gives you the chance to sharpen your skills before you start playing with the big boys.

You can write off your time on your taxes as a charitable donation!

Also, as Ammon Johns pointed out, this is a great networking opportunity. You’ll have the chance to meet and work with people of a caliber that you otherwise would never have been able to meet. You’ll get your name out, and you may even pick up some other jobs as a result!

Charities can be a great reference, or at very least, they can throw you a good link (thanks, mcanerin).

Finally, you get the satisfaction of helping someone out that really needed you. And that’s something that money can’t buy.

Coming Soon: Ideas for Approaching Nonprofits

I had a paradigm shift in the way I understand SEO. Previous to posting on the forums and emailing a few expert SEOs, I viewed SEO as a largely technical profession, despite my feelings about the creative possibilities of the field. However, after hearing from my elders and betters, I have to admit that SEO is a much broader and more inclusive discipline than I had previously believed. So let me share my understanding of the field at this point.

SEO is actually a very wide-ranging and inclusive field with plenty of room for specialization. And depending on the specialization you choose, you’ll have need of different skills. That said, there were a few universalities that seemed to come out across the board. The first universality was the SEO is not merely web programming. Rather, it is marketing, and therefore a solid understanding of people and marketing tactics is essential to being a successful SEO. A couple of resources that were suggested to me were Malcolm Galdwell’s Tipping Point and Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.

Another essential skill is risk management. Regardless of what kind of SEO you practice, you need to have a good idea of what will happen when you tweak a page or start a new linking strategy. You don’t want to kick your, or more particularly, your client’s page out of the index.

One skill that was also mentioned, that I actually felt halfway competent at, was writing and content creation. I’ve heard that “content is king” but never has it been so firmly impressed upon me. I’ll never doubt again.

I did get several responses about which technical skills were the most useful (which is what I was driving at initially, although I don’t think I would trade the digression for anything). The general consensus was as follows, in order of importance:

1. HTML
2. Design and CSS
3. Programming (PHP, Perl, Linux, Apache, etc)

Ultimately, my conclusion is that SEO is a holistic discipline in which most or all of these skills are required in order to be truly top-tier. And it just occurred to me that I should turn this into a top ten list. Look for it…

Thanks to Stuntdubl, Graywolf, Black Knight, SEOTutor, and everyone else that chimed in. I look forward to picking your brains to a further extent in the future.

I’ve come to realize over the past little while, that while I understand a few things about how SEO works, I’m lacking a lot (translation: virtually all) of the skills that I need to make things happen. So in my spare time, I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible, but it’s become a frustrating experience. I feel like I’m just flailing around without any clear purpose. So, after stewing over this for a few days, I’ve decided to consult my betters. I’ve posted some questions on a few forums I read, and I’ve contacted some of the SEOs I respect the most with the following question:

What skills are the most important to SEO? Programming, and if so, which language? Or design using CSS? Or another skill I haven’t even thought of yet? And in what order should I learn these skills?

Anyway, if you have any ideas about this topic, feel free to comment on this post. I’m completely open to ideas. And for the sake of posterity, I’ll post my findings on this blog.

My original post on Squidoo can be found here. After less than a week, the first results from Squidoo are in. If you had done a search for “Nate Kartchner” a week ago, the 4th entry from the top would have been the #1 result for my name (it should be the post where I got moded for being wrong about the crane kick in “The Karate Kid”). However, the #1 and #2 results are both from Squidoo now. Granted, these aren’t actual lenses I’ve created, so I’m still awaiting final judgment, however, this is a good sign that the domain is picking up some trust from Google, which bodes well for my lenses. And I can’t believe how many quality lens names are still available. I’m picking them up as quickly as I can think of them, but there are still plenty, if you’re still interested in getting while the getting’s good.

Check it out: Squidoo.com

This is going to be a blog about SEO. I don’t plan on writing a lot about my personal life, or my musings about politics, school, or society. If you’re looking for that, you can check out Towering Intellect. This blog is going to be pure SEO.

I used to play jazz trumpet, and I learned a few things about what it takes to play jazz. You come into it with a plan. Are you going to play the blues? Bop? Maybe some fusion, if you’re real edgy. Then you have to pick the key. The key will determine the sound, but it also determines the difficulty. Then you throw down a melody, whether it’s one you’ve heard a million times like “Take The ‘A’ Train” or something you come up with right before the session. At this point, you’re free to let creativity fly. Arrange the piece. Solo on the changes. Play with the rhythm and changes. Create spontaneously and create something new, that’s never been heard before and will never be heard again. Ultimately, once you’ve had your time to lay out your soul in the music, you’ve left an indelible impression upon your audience that they’ll reflect upon for years to come.

It seems to me that brilliant SEO is a lot like jazz. You come to a project or site with specific needs, and you make specific plans to address those needs. Do you go white hat? Black hat? Or maybe you bust out your gray hat. Also, at some point, you have to determine the keywords you’re going to use. The right keywords will create great traffic, but the right keyword could also be highly competitive. The keyword determines success as well as difficulty. At this point, you let creativity fly. You can focus on creating link-worthy content. You can refine the site’s ideas and design to better appeal to the engines and to the site’s visitors. Do they need some linkbuilding and SEO-friendly URLs? And how do you combine them? Every site’s different, and you’ll never approach an identical situation again. And in the end, hopefully, you’ll be able to create a solid site that will appear in the tops of the SERPs for a long time to come.

Picking up jazz took a lot of effort and dedication, and I don’t see why really good SEO should be any different. This blog will chronicle my journey to become a true top-notch SEO. I hope you enjoy the ride along with me, and maybe we’ll both come away with something as a result of this blog.