

Ask HN: How to get into SEO consulting?  - zlatan

Hi everyone!<p>I'm 17 and would really love to get into SEO, as I think it's valuable for startups and a nice way to help people through consulting.<p>Could you recommend any links? articles? I'd really appreciate it.
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brk
At 17, I'd suggest you probably just bypass this altogether.

SEO is not magic or difficult, it is what HTML was in the 90's.

I remember when a person who did little more than a webpage layout could
charge $3,000+ for what was basically a set of static page templates because
most people thought that HTML was a "language" akin to C++ or something. Now
you can get a web page template for free, or $50 at the most.

When you get right down to it, SEO is just basic layout best-practices and
having fresh, relevant content on your page. You can carry on all you want
about "backlinks" and "pagerank" and "referrer text", but at the end of the
day you can fit 98% of all SEO rules on the back of business card.

In the next few years, SEO is going to be thought of as highly as "HTML
writing": it will be assumed that any 14 year old can do it for free (and this
will be mostly true).

Most of the more savvy web-marketing types I've spoken with over the last
couple of years don't see a future in SEO as a "career".

At your age, you need to be looking toward the next thing, not the last thing.
If you really want to play with SEO in the meantime though, start with
seobook.com.

~~~
aaronwall
Thanks for recommending our site. :D

I think there will always be a career in SEO, but what that career looks like
will change over time. Years ago it was tweaking page titles and meta tags.
Page titles are still important, of course, but then links got added to the
mix. And so then it was link trading. And then people figured links had value
so it became about buying links. And then Google pushed hard to crack down on
that and it became about how to buy links creatively and/or indirectly to
maximize returns while minimizing risks. And Google has got more aggressive at
folding query stream data into the relevancy algorithms, and they are working
on a new infrastructure called Caffeine, which will allow them to fold even
more data into the relevancy algorithms. As Google collects more data,
eventually the distinction between SEO and marketing blurs as lots of SEO
techniques will just parallel strong marketing principals.

As far as doing the consulting business model...its a hard business model to
succeed at because it is a saturated market AND...

\- some people excel at doing SEO

\- others excel at selling SEO

the difference between the 2 is non-trivial...depending on what you are good
at, (like if you are better at implementation than sales) you might do better
as a publisher than as a service provider. and running your own sites lets you
keep more of the profits recurring while also being able to test stuff that
you might not want to test on a client website.

further, there are a few catch-22 situations with selling SEO services

\- in many ways in the economic sense the SEO consulting market is a market
for lemons

<http://www.johnon.com/293/seo-consulting-2.html>

how this works, is people are told it is risky, so they invest little...and
the investment is so small that they hire a scammer. the scammer takes their
money and does nothing, and then they think the whole field of SEO is a scam,
and are afraid to invest much with anyone else

\- the biggest way to get around that market for lemons effect is to be well
known and well branded so that people trust you a lot and are willing to pay
extra to work with you specifically because they trust you. one of the best
ways to do this is be socially active online, go to any offline events you can
afford to and network (I got my first SEO conference pas for free for helping
stuff all the programming things in the bag and hand them out to attendees),
and write a blog. one more key here is that its hard to just try to own the
keyword SEO _brutally hard_ ... a better approach is to take a niche and try
to own it. reelseo.com is doing video seo. David Mihm is doing local search.
and so on. back when I got started I ran one of the first SEO blogs _and_ I
wrote an ebook back when it was common knowledge that all written books were
out of date (and used that as my strategy in terms of reason for format
delivery and product naming). some common niches that people target when
starting out are doing stuff in their local area (makes sales easier as you
can meet people face to face) and a particular vertical they want to have
exposure in (say legal or automotive)

\- as a consultant who does a really good job you rarely get to capture 1% of
the value you create. even if you charge high 5 or low 6 figures for a
project, you typically end up adding hundreds to thousands of times that much
value to the company. and you still have to fight the in house legal teams to
get stuff done (some what you to have x potential upside and limitless
downside exposure).

\- one last tricky thing is that if they don't have an in-house SEO they
likely don't care enough about it to invest in having a consultant work on it.
and if they do have an in-house team there is a fear/risk in the minds of some
which sets a limit as to how much they can pay you before they worry about
looking incompetent for hiring $x worth of external help when they already
have an in-house team

\- 2 more tips with consulting here...it tends to be a feast or famine
business model...so again publishing your own websites is a great way to
smooth out the peaks and valleys. also publishing your own websites lets you
be more selective with who you are willing to take on as a consulting client.
the 80/20 rule applies to SEO where the top few clients will be most of the
income...so anything you can do to create some passive revenues to prevent you
from taking on bad clients that won't produce any profits is a win.

\- I could write on this topic for hours...but don't want to hog too many more
pixels. let me know if you have any follow up questions.

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jaxc
If you wanted to learn about SEO then you could always jump in the deep end
and setup a small website or blog with a dot.com domain name with some
original content around a niche (topic) something small that you know a lot
about and try play the Google/bing/yahoo(?) game and aim to get your site
ranked well. It will take a while especially with a new 'virgin' site.

The best place to start would be google webmaster Tools. Follow best practices
they recommend and go from there. There are loads of articles on SEO, some
good, some bad and some erm shady.

Google's algorithm is regularly updated and changes and there is no 100%
certified or guaranteed no matter what anyone may say or try to sell you to
get to number 1 spot. It is a mixture of luck, links, good original content
and more luck. There's no one way to be top and the best is to just jump
straight into it and get your hands dirty. Build up experience and go from
there.

Some people who I would trust with good SEO advice is Google's Matt Cutts. His
blog at <http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/> is a good way of keeping in the loop.

For search engine news there is a journalist called Danny Sullivan. His
personal blog is <http://daggle.com/> and he also blogs at
<http://searchengineland.com/> He is someone who I would respect with good
reporting on search engines.

There's plenty of others too. Google et al are your friends there. They are
just a couple that came into my mind.

The only way to stay on top is to follow Google's and other best practices as
they evolve and experiment with your own site and plenty of research.

Sorry its not quick but best way to learn is through experience.

Good luck.

Edited for typos and readability.

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jfi
One person you might want to Google is Mike Mothner - he's a Dartmouth College
graduate and started a business from his dorm room when he was a senior (I
believe). He turned it into a company called wPromote, which specializes in
site optimization (which, I agree, will pretty much fall into the category of
"writing HTML" if it hasn't already) and other consultative areas. He's an
interesting guy and his story might be of interest to you!

