SEO basically started when more than 10 people created their websites on the same topic. It really took off when the first email spam touting SEO services hit the inboxes in the later part of the 1990s.

  Seriously, it was the mid 90s when webmasters started to optimize their websites to show up in various search engines (remember LookSmart, Lycos, InfoSeek, AltaVista). We have come a long way since then. Nowadays, SEO has become a sophisticated field, a subset of internet marketing, which requires a multi-disciplinary, if not expertise, at least an understanding of the technical, web design, copy writing and general marketing. Check out the job requirements here.. SEO Jobs.

Think of the multi-disciplinary nature of SEO as an opportunity, and you will hear this from our team of successful, famous and established SEO professionals, backgrounds doesnt matter as much as the willingness to learn and understand all of them to be a successful SEO professional. The best part is, there is no 4 year degree (at least as far as I know), so everybody is starting at the same point. Its unique in that its relatively new, evolving and will continue to evolve as search engine changes but the need to be in the first page of search engine results will never go away.

Today we have a global panel of SEO professionals who are truly diverse in their geography, their background, when they started, how they started. This goes to show that SEO as a career does not have a pre-requisite other than an ability to learn, apply and persevere through the search engine idiosyncrasies. Its my pleasure to introduce our panel...

Aaron Wall

SEO has brought him fame, fortune and love, really, Aaron has built the #1 SEO training program (SEOBook), his "As Seen In" list includes MSNBC, PBS, Wall St Journal, Wired etc and he got his girl because of SEO. His would be wife started as his SEO customer. She was the inspiration behind the the #1 SEO training program.

Heather Angus Lee

A long time print media journalist, Heather started her business as a web writer and then incorporated SEO to provide added value to her  creative services. For years she covered industrial automation/control, attending industry events in Canada, US and Europe. Heather s known for her industry know-how, her fire ball energy and continent wide connections. She is currently a blogger for Century 21 Canada and the owner of PROSocialMedia and WritingSEO.

Gary Cottam

The chief editor of Phoenix SEO blog, Gary is a well known and respected member of the SEO community. He has managed projects for blue chip companies such as Aventis and GSK and has his own SEO & Web Design company, Doublespark. His Phoenix SEO blog is a way for him to communicate the latest news in SEO and web design as well as informative SEO articles and tips. He is also the technical director of Titman Firth, a graphic design company.

David Ratovitch

Based in Tel-Aviv, David has been helping small businesses with internet marketing strategy, Pay Per Click and SEO. He strongly believes that there are no secrets with SEO & SEM, other than honesty, persistence, commitment, professionalism and a drive to help. He started out as an Audio Engineer, became an Ebay power seller before becoming a full fledged SEO consultant. His blog.

Kevin Gillett

A Princeton guy, Kevin started off writing software to display NASA launch data, later worked in Oracle and then became a full fledged blogger. He incorporated SEO into his current venture Blog Traffic Exchange which, along with SEO uses chaos theory and relevancy algorithms to suggest other blog posts thereby increasing traffic by exchanging reader with other members.

Nisha Garg

An in-house SEO professional, Nisha provides SEO/SEM guidance, PPC campaign management and optimiation and viral marketing. She is currently involved with youtring.com, a calling, social networking with its own blogging and sharing platform.

When & how did you get started in search engine optimization?

Aaron:  In 2003 I wanted to rank a thin rant website. That is what started my SEO career. And then I started chatting on forums, became a moderator at SearchGuild, wrote some popular articles, and began a blog. Around the time I started writing articles I got many client enquiries. My early client projects were successful and everything took off from there.

Heather: I was a B2B journalist for almost 20 years, before choosing to move into the world of online publishing. While at an Internet publishing company a few years back, I was lucky enough to be one of the site editors/writers trained by the best in the biz - Rand Fiskin, of SEOmoz fame, was flown up to our offices to train us in SEO best practices.

Gary: It is coming up to almost 10 years since I took a change in career direction (a complete reversal actually) and entered the online world. It was while cutting my teeth as a junior developer that I realised there was little point in building attractive, functional sites that nobody visited and my interest in all things search was born.

David: 3 years ago, after having a successful ebay store with a powerseller status, I wanted to expand and build my web store. Searching for providers I had been exposed to the SEO field and found my true destiny. I found a professional training program, sold my ebay store and devoted my self to develop my the search engine marketing skills.

Kevin: I got started in SEO as a blogger. Trying to get my blog to rank. As the Editor-in-Chief of the Prosper blog this became even more important. In fact, my current startup (Blog Traffic Exchange) was a direct consequence of of both my SEO work and my blogging.

Nisha: In 2006, I was searching for some training that very few of them knew or were undergoing. Suddenly, I got to know about SEO and found it interesting. Just joined it to beat the Google rankings...

If you were hiring an SEO expert, what would you look for?

Aaron: For most small businesses I would suggest they learn to do SEO on their own websites. The traditional pattern is to hold back due to uncertainty, and hire at the lower end of the market, which ends up setting in a market for lemons effect when hiring consultants.

If you are hiring an SEO to provide services to others it is important to hire someone who can also pull in leads. This gives speakers working the conference circuit a strong premium over other similarly competent SEOs.

If you are hiring an in house SEO then they need to fit in with your company culture. Some companies like to keep their SEO efforts hush hush, while other companies (like VintageTub) benefit by sharing their SEO war stories and networking.

Heather:

• Examples of actual page ranking results from past work.
• Professional references of customers.
• Ethics : A signed commitment to not servicing your competitors with same keywords
  

Gary: The most important qualities when hiring are personality and loyalty, after these then you need to look at skillsets and communication ability. Most young people have a natural affinity with the Internet but there are also many grey-heads who combine traditional education and knowledge with a hunger to learn and progress their online skills.

David:

• Fire in the eyes
• Confidence
• Good level of documentation
• Steady methodical attitude
  

Kevin: Cost. Ability. Past projects. Backlink proposal.

Nisha: I would ask him how he would generate traffic to a particular brand or website and what he has achieved in his SEO experience.

What do you do in a typical day? 

Aaron: Most of my time is spent working on our SEO Community forums that comes with our SEO training program.

Heather: Research keywords; writing landing page copy; meet with clients; check my RSS feeds of SEO blogs/sites.

Gary: I usually get up at 5am and start writing SEO content as soon as I've had a cup of tea. What I like about SEO work is that I am always learning about something new, whether it's how diamonds are formed or plastic surgery, and the fact that I am having to continually develop my own online skills every day.

David:
- Managing and Tasking my virtual team
- Going over clients accounts in my webmastertool, analytics and the MCC dashboards.
- 1 hour of self business marketing (ppc, articles, social media, etc.)
- Customers support
- Leads follow-ups

Kevin: Check search rankings. Check monetization. Market Blog Traffic Exchange.

Nisha: Plan the activities/tasks or things that need to done, prioritize them, schedule them and manage them accordingly.

Any interesting/funny experience regarding search engines that you can share?

Aaron: My first real substantial income from SEO on my own websites came from me being a bad speller. I was 1 of only 2 matches in the Yahoo! Search database for the misspelled version of an online casino back when online gaming was legal.  I got checks for thousands of dollars only because I was not good at spelling. Search engines are much more aggressive with spell correction tools so that opportunity is no longer as strong, but new opportunities open as old ones close.

Heather: I'm loving how the presumed monopoly of Google is being challenged these days by none other than Microsoft (Bing has awesome features) and by the likes of Hakia and other beta "semantic" search engines.

Gary: Search is a serious business but as fascinating as the technology is, it?s people that make the internet such a wonderful resource. On a mundane level, misspellings always throw up some amusing search findings such as mixing up steal and steel. In fact, typical misspellings should always be considered when optimizing websites but without making the sites look as though they are written by someone who cannot spell. Of course, search engines have brought people together in amusing ways who would never have been able to find each other even five years ago.  Of course, meeting up with a past amour may not always be laugh out loud funny, especially for the current partner!

David: Search engine changed my life. It is a true second career for me. One I did not think I can find.

Kevin: Not publicly.

Nisha: Might not be interesting but..... We had 15 in-house domains related to mobile industry and we were all targeting them with the same keywords...with only few efforts we all were ranking from position 1 to 15 :-)

Advice that you have for beginners: on where to start, how to learn, and become a successful search engine optimization professional?

Aaron: This is perhaps a bit self-serving, but our SEO training program is a great place to start. If you are in a rush for a quick free primer then our SEO Basics Knol  is a great starting point. Leading conferences like SES,  SMX, and Pubcon also are a good way to immerse yourself in the topic.

Another great way to learn about online marketing and SEO is to start a blog about topics you are passionate about and actively market it. Seeing what ideas spread (and learning why they spread) in one market helps position you better to be able to work in other markets. You do not need to be perfect or polished to start. You are better off starting rough and gaining experience today.

Heather: Read everything you can, especially from leaders like seomoz.org and SearchEngineLand.com (and for latest in social media, read expert sites like mashable.com). Don't be afraid to try new things; ie. Local SEO, video SEO, image SEO. Always write for the humans, not just the bots. Push blogging, blogging and more blogging to clients - fresh, relevant, original content is Google's favourite SEO variable right now.

Gary: My advice for anyone wanting to use the Internet for promotion is to understand that it is changing all the time. SEO content has moved on from the days of simple key word stuffing and now goes hand in hand with good original copy. Keywords will always be important but there are bound to be new ways of searching the internet just waiting to be developed. 

There is no doubt that trying to figure out how marketing on the Internet works takes quite a lot of work. The best approach is not to struggle to take it all in at once but to chip away at it bit by bit.

David:

• Read the right info!
• Find a mentor.
• Find a proper training program develop by an SEO pro and not a ghost writer in elance.
• Take the first step using freelance sites like get a coder, elance and guru.com
  

Kevin: Start blogging. Read all you can. Follow the experts. Join the Blog Traffic Exchange.

Nisha:

• Start: would suggest to understand what exactly does optimization means as many SEO experts still are not clear to what is optimization.
• Learn: suggest to have a clear understanding about the basic search engine terms and implement them (may be through blogs or registering a new domain for implementation)
• once he or she has hold on the seo techniques and strategies, he can become a professional.
  

What do you think is the best career path - freelancing, marketing agencies, or in-house corporate jobs?

Aaron: This largely depends on the individual. Some people need to be around others, and other people get along well on their own.

As far as producing massive cash-flow, I think the way to do that best is to own your own websites which you invest in and grow to market leading publications. Affiliate marketers get paid much closer to their true market value than employees typically do. But affiliate marketing can be feast or famine, and it can be pretty risky to branch out on your own, especially if you do not have much savings.

It is hard to make a lot of money freelancing unless you establish a brand that lets you charge premium rates and/or focus on a specific niche or vertical.

Many successful SEOs do a combination of freelancing and traditional jobs to build cash-flow and knowledge, while investing some of that into growing their own websites. Depending on factors like how confident you are in your SEO skills and how many people are relying on you one can determine when to make the shift away from being an employee to building their own sites full time.

Heather: I think whatever you can get in this crummy economy is the best path! When times are good again, I think developing a strong freelance career is a great path to choose re: versatility and being nimble in keeping up with fast changing SEO trends. Bigger companies and agencies don't always make that as easy to do.

Gary: None of the above.
Start early while your earning requirements are lower. Build your own sites and SEO those rather than perform SEO for others. This is the best career path and the way to make true $$$$.  

David: All depend on the offer you get. If you have the mentality for self marketing and you posses some sales skills then work for your self. If you get a position in a big agencies where you can experience the wide array of search marketing skills then this is a good option, but i wouldn't recommend to take a steady job as a buzzer...

In house is all about the organisation market. If the work involve a tight market where you will need to sweat out your ranking then go for it. That will be a grate opportunity for you. However, if you are working for an organisation where SEO is something that is cool to have with no management decision that search marketing success is a goal then you are about to have a very boring day to day professional life.

Kevin: Freelancing or agencies.

Nisha: For me its in-house corporate jobs because as much as we can learn in house projects we can not learn in others. The strategies and techniques that we can use for in house cannot be put on marketing agencies nor in freelancing as they are limited to particular slot of work and activities. We can work and implement all the activities, do experimentation and branding as per in our minds for in-house as they are own company undertakings...according to me...

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Thank you Aaron, Heather, Gary, David, Kevin and Nisha for sharing your experience, knowledge and insight. It was a pleasure hosting you all.

Anybody who reached the end, actually reading and not by blind scrolling, give a pat on your back, you have what it takes to be a successful SEO professional - patience, an ability to read lengthy posts (trust me, you need this when you have a problem and you are searching for a solution) and a desire to learn.

 

 

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Whenever I have an Idea I write it down, even if its not a very good idea, sometimes the bad ideas lead to better ones - Steven Snell

Creativity is surpassing limitations and making changes - Anthony Zinni

Attention to Detail - Wolfgang Bartelme

Does web design, creative design require a formal education. What is the most important skill required to be an excellent designer. How would one start, how would one progress on a career path as a web designer. These were some of the questions we posed to a panel of accomplished, successful and passionate designers. 

Its an honor to introduce them.

 Wolfgang Bartelme: Called variously as "Uber Design Hound", "one of the modern masters in online design and creativity", "the king of multi-colored wallpapers", Wolfgang is well known in the creative design community as the one with the ability to capture an application's purpose in the most confined of areas, in an icon. Wolfgangs Microformat Icon Devkit and Wordpress themes are being used in all sorts of applications and web sites. In fact there are 975,000 references in Google for "Designed By Wolfgang Bartelme". Wolfgang lives in Austria and his design company Bartelme Design focuses on creating standards compliant web sites and professional icons for websites and applications. Follow him on Twitter.

Anthony Zinni: A multi-disciplined designer who is a big proponent of designs that are practical and measurable, Anthony has the ability to come up with designs that are both aesthetically pleasing and effective. His Positive Space blog, a nod to the idea of content vs presentation, covers inspirational roundup and practical how-to's about working as a professional graphic designer. His recent "The Personal Web Design Degree" project is a direct response to the question "What do I need to study to become a web designer". The personal web design degree is an open education curriculum that teaches both beginning web designers and seasoned print designers design within the context of the web. A very laudable project to introduce and train the next generation of creative web designers. During the day he is the lead art director for AssociaDirect and LEVEL2 Marketing Group located in Chicago Illinois.

Steven Snell: A successful web designer, Steven also is a prolific blogger and freelance writer. Out of college, armed with two degrees, one in business administration and the other in Bible, I doubt he would have made anybody's list of most likely to succeed as a web designer. In fact he was an internal auditor before he quit to become a web designer. Today he not only manages a thriving Vanderlay Web Design but also runs DesignM.ag, a blog/community for web designers and Traffikd, a social media and internet marketing blog. In his 40 hour days, he also contributes and freelances interesting articles like Redesigning Craigslist With Focus On Usability,
 Advantages and dis-advantages of working with multiple screens, 8 addictive habits of bloggers etc. Steven is married and lives in the burbs of Philadelphia. His Twitter.

Q. When and how did you get started in web design?

Wolfgang: I started doing web design around 12 years ago. In the beginning it was just for fun and to be honest my first sites sucked. Both from a coding and from a visual point of view. During my studies of "Information Design" however I developed a better understanding of how to do visual appealing designs and semantic correct markup.

Anthony: I actually began web design in late 1998. I was in high school and our school had a web development course, which was really just some simple HTML and JavaScript tutorials. After that I took some slightly more sophisticated web development classes at the local community college half the day while still in high school. The work I had done with development was interesting, but I had a desire to learn about actual design so following high school I enrolled in a visual communications program.

Steven: I was introduced to web design in 2002 when I took a course in college. During that semester we learned the basics of HTML to the point that we could build a basic website. It was a very low level web design course (we didn't even learn anything about CSS), but it helped to build a foundation of knowledge on the basics of HTML. Following that class I continued learning through books and online tutorials.

Q. What is the single most important attribute/skill a good web designer must have?

Wolfgang: A good web designer needs to have both an eye for detail and for the whole thing. Meaning that he always has to be aware of the major goal and target group of the site, while still focusing on small details, such as nicely designed forms etc.

Anthony: Often times the term web designer is used when the job seeker really is looking for a web developer, which has led to a large number of professionals who really do not know design theory. Learning design theory, typography, and design history is an absolute must for any web designer who really strives to be great.

Steven: In my opinion, the most important attribute is to have a desire for continual learning and development. Technology and trends change so quickly that even if you have developed strong skills, you'll be left behind if you do not continue to grow. There are always new things to learn and plenty of room for improvement.

Q. What hard and soft skills should a web designer have? Should he/she have a degree or can you be self taught?

Wolfgang: First and probably most important: a web designer has to be good at listening to clients. Understanding the customer's needs and expectations will speed up and improve the quality of your work drastically. Besides that you have to have decent understanding of usability guidelines and patterns, good knowledge of CSS/XHTML and Javascript and last but not least a sense of aesthetics.

While it's good to have some sort of academic background, I don't think that it's necessary. I know many designers, me included, that are mostly self taught& and of course still self teaching. That's an ongoing progress!

Anthony: Aside from knowledge of design theory, a web designer should also have at least a functional knowledge of web development. Web design is so dependant on knowing technical constraints that having a firm grasp of what is possible is a must.

The debate over whether you should have a degree to practice design is far larger that I would like to try and tackle in my response, however I do believe that there is something to be gained from learning in a group environment from an experienced practitioner. Design can be very subjective, and learning how to create and spot great design is in my opinion best learned in a collaborative environment. I do believe that it is possible to learn on your own, but you may be missing out on some great insight in the process.

Steven: It's hard for me to say someone should have a degree when I don't have one myself. If you look at the top web designers and developers you'll see a good mix of people who have formal education and those who are self taught. I think it's certainly beneficial to have a degree, and I wish I had more formal training in design and development, but there is still the need to keep learning on your own.

Q.  Your opinion on Fixed Width versus Fluid Design

Wolfgang: Both fixed and fluid layouts have their advantages and it depends a bit on the type and on the content of the site which one to choose. In my opinion corporate websites, blogs or simple one-pager (e.g. iPhone app website etc.) tend to work better with a fixed layout, because you have more control over the style of text and images. Moreover text is easier to read if there are just about 50 to 60 characters per line. A shopping site for instance (e.g. Amazon) may work better with a fluid layout.

Anthony: Fixed in the large majority of circumstances (95%), however there are times when fluid is appropriate. However, whenever fluid is being used min and max widths are a must. Reading extremely long lines of text is just plain annoying.

Steven: My opinion is that the fixed or fluid decision should be made on a case by case basis. Most of the work I do is fixed width, and that is what I prefer for my personal projects. Most of the clients I have had also prefer fixed width designs because of the greater consistency of the design.

Q. EMS, percentage, pixels or points?

Wolfgang: If you had asked me this question one or two years ago, I would have answered that it's best to stick to percentages and EMs. On the one hand to make the site look acceptable even after changing font size, and on the other to make IE6 resize text at all :)

However now that the major browsers (IE7+, Firefox3+ and Safari3+) changed their default way of resizing content (they now resize both text and images) I tend to going back to pixels. It's the more natural unit for pixel based displays. I don't use points at all& except when doing print stylesheets.

Anthony: Pixels, they have the greatest amount of accuracy cross-browser. With document zooming being pretty much standard in all modern browsers other units of measurement are just more confusing to use, and far more complicated when trying to set type on a consistent baseline grid.

Steven: I generally use pixels for layouts. For text sizing I'll typically set the body text to a percentage and size the specific text elements in ems.

Q. What tools are a must have in a good web designer's arsenal?

Wolfgang: A good text editor. Don't rely on a WYSIWYG editor, because most of them produce crappy markup and you don't really get a "feeling" for how things work. And secondly, a tool to do decent graphics. I prefer doing most of my work in Photoshop, but you may have your own favorite tools :)

Anthony: I couldnt work without a sketchbook of some kind, a computer, and creative suite. jQuery is also pretty useful but I wouldnt call it an absolute necessity.

Steven: Photoshop would be the tool that I would consider the most important to me. For coding, there are a lot of editors out there and so I wouldn't classify any of them individually as a must have, it's more of a personal choice as to which one(s) you prefer.

Q. Any advice to budding and beginning web designers?

Wolfgang: Browse the web, get inspired. If you see anything nice, startup Firebug and look how it's implemented. Try to do something similar in your next project. But keep in mind: don't steal someone's else's code or design.

Anthony: Learn about design theory. Pick up books about print design and learn how you can apply the theories to the web in an appropriate way. Also, look for inspiration outside of the design showcase galleries. These galleries can be great resources but they showcase trends, and trends end. Instead strive for work that is timeless and meets client goals, looking amazing is only half of the design equation.

Steven: Focus on improving your skills and getting experience. You can work on personal projects of your own or pick up work from friends and family if you're not ready to start doing client work that will bring more pressure. Freelancing part-time is a great way to develop your skills without the pressure of giving up a stable income from a full-time job.

We have come to the the end of our discussion,  here are some key points not to forget..

• A good designer has a keen eye for detail and a desire to continually learn and improve
• Whether you have a formal degree or not, continuing to learn is the key for success
• Fixed Width is the way to go in majority of circumstances
• Pixels is an unanimous favorite
• Photoshop + text editor + sketchpad are the key tools of a good designer
• Learn, learn and continue to learn
  

Our thanks to Wolfgang, Anthony and Steven for taking the time to share their wisdom and thoughts. Its a privilege and a pleasure to host them on OdinJobs.

 

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