The Lady Programmer

I had mentioned previously that there are freelance SEO skills is always sought in many web design jobs. Many clients are now finding people who can optimize their sites for search engines.

Here are some job offers found in various freelance sites:

• Web designer and SEO optimization
  Need assistance updating current eCommerce website selling childrens products.  Need images optimized for website.  Need current webpages re-designed (using pappashop webhost interface) to new design parameters.  Need site optimized for search engine.
• Landing Page Specialist
  Create themed, siloed websites for specific keywords.
  Knowledge of creating landing pages that comply to Google Adwords Quality quality standards.
• Search Engine Optimization and Backlinking
  I am in need of SEO of my website. I am looking for someone to go through my website and update the PHP code with:
  1.  Keywords.  You can come up with a list and I can also give you the keywords.
  2.  Metatags.
  3.  Description.
  4. Create backlinks
  5.  Submit to search engines.
  6.  Link building

Not every trained programmer and web designer came out of school armed with an idea of what search engine optimization is. I met a lot of IT personnel who had no idea what good SEO can really do to their company websites.

UPDATE: Hoops! Almost forgot, thanks to Pastilan for emailing me a copy of SEO Optimization.

I’ve previously mentioned about my quest to learn SEO skills which is a growing demand in freelance jobs. Even before I put out that post, there are a number of people who had been asking me through email or through blog comments on any previous post that instructs them on how to do SEO. I am not really an expert on this one, and I’ve realized that SEO skills takes time – it can even take years to understand this stuff.

I keep a number of blogs that I follow all along to learn such skill. Here are some SEO sites that I keep in my Google reader:

• Tech At Hand Dot Net 
• Macuha.com
• Money and SEO
• Search Engine Guide 
• SEO Fast Start 
• The Ad Master

I only know Marghil Macuha through reading his Macuha.com blog regularly. It was from his site where I found the eBook in understanding SEO the easiest way. His blog deals more his SEO explorations though.

Dexter of Tech At Hand Dot Net is a blog that I visit regularly. This guy too, has his own SEO explorations. I find his posts useful in learning SEO. You might want to check out his SEO category – I’ve been digging through that archive a day ago and find his posts very helpful.

Engr. Cesar Noel was very helpful guy who is into this stuff for several years. He had been very helpful in giving me leads on where I could get the good SEO resources to start with.

All the remaining blogs are also worth reading. Check them out too.

Like Dexter had mentioned, on the previous post on freelance SEO skills, forums are a good way of learning SEO. Here are some good ones:

• DigitalPoint forums 
• SEO Chat forums
• Webmasterworld
• and even our own SEO Philippines Forum

Engr. Cesar Noel was also kind in mentioning SEO Guy forums. He also reminded me that the best SEO practice is producing good content.

I got out of doing web pages as a freelancer to discover what SEO is. Some of you may know that SEO simply stands for search engine optimization. Why did I do this? There is quite a growing demand for these skills in constructing new websites.

As I tried to scour the web to know more about SEO, I realized that it can actually be a separate skill apart from doing web design. In fact, this is a skill that is always practiced, experimented and even contested in many blogs. It is not some skill that is written in stone and taught in schools, unlike learning and mastering new programming languages.

This led me to discover that blogging can also be a fruitful career – there are a lot of ways to make money from it. I also made some mental notes:

• I’ve done a number of paid posts and got spanked by Google a number of times. Being spanked by Google lessens the chances of doing more paid opportunities. Hence, doing paid reviews alone are not a sustainable means of income.
• Affiliate marketing is also a good passive income.
• Social networks can also be a great way to promote a blog and is much easier to gain traffic and loyal readers. Always have time for it.
• Search engine traffic gives stable traffic in the long term, and are most likely to click on ads like Adsense. It is also possible to keep loyal readers, but I think not as loyal as those in social networks.
• Keeping loyal readers motivate me to blog more, not only doing reviews to get paid.
• Paid reviews on every post make a blog less interesting.
• Unlike learning a programming language, SEO is not a skill that is learned and mastered over a few days.
• I never stop at learning new things because there can be opportunities that are waiting to be discovered.

Am I leaving my blogs? No, not that I’ve discovered the prime benefit of blogging to my freelance career – to promote my work. I still hope to learn SEO too and this blog can be a good start to understanding it.

How does a business benefit from search engine optimization services?

Search Engine Traffic: The Holy Grail

At first I’ve always looked upon search engine traffic as the Holy Grail of website visits. I still consider it as the Holy Grail, because over long term, search engine visitors had always found the older posts contained in my blog.

I’ve ventured into blogging in the meantime to learn some SEO skills along with new web design skills. Search engine optimization is something that some freelance web design jobs require. I had to learn a bit of SEO to make myself profitable in this career. Along the way, I realized that it is possible to profit from doing blogging gigs.

try any of the listed keywords beside each site in Google search

Don’t Easily Topple at Google’s No. 1 Search Ranking Spot

Bigger businesses who need to promote their online presence needed better exposure. Thus, they require the help of search engine optimization consulting services such as those from ThinkBigSites.com to help them out. I’ve realized that many hands are needed to really optimize a big business site for stable and better search engine rankings. For one, an army of bloggers can help build a buzz to improve a business website’s rankings with the right keywords.

A small website made for a small business can profit from a little SEO made by a single webmaster; but to really be consistent in the search engine rankings then it is best to invest in search engine optimization companies.

A business listed at the top of Google search engine always gets the best exposure. Once it gets noticed it gets a good number of visitors. Among those visitors some of them will be doing business deals.