SEO promotion how to learn. Self-learning SEO from scratch

We have released a new book “Content Marketing in in social networks: How to get into your subscribers’ heads and make them fall in love with your brand.”

We all came from other professions (related and not), but we were united by one thing: a terrible interest in what was happening on the Internet.

If the thought “I want to become an SEO” has stuck in your head and you don’t know where to start, then listen to the dinosaurs. We had a long trek with rocks, holes, tripping, rattlesnakes and so on. Once they even almost went extinct;) But jokes aside, it’s time for fascinating stories about how we learned SEO from scratch.

Oleg Vasiliev

Believes that the SEO profession begins with a detailed study of responsibilities

Tips from Baku if you are attracted to an SEO vacancy:

Look better: whether you are just someone looking for a job or a student, there are many similar vacancies on the market, they will even help you learn how to optimize for free :)

Don’t be lazy: find and read what SEO is, who an SEO specialist is and what his responsibilities are. For what? So as not to waste your time or the time of your manager who will guide you. Yes, yes, exactly to guide. You will learn the basic information on your own.

Know and conquer: in order to learn competent SEO website promotion, you need to completely immerse yourself in your profession, quickly delve into the topics of your clients and be prepared for the fact that there is no magic pill that solves all problems. There will be no template projects or solutions. And yes, if all three describe you, then you belong in Semantics.

Daria Kuznetsova

Content marketer. Trying to learn SEO for free at the expense of his colleagues’ free time

I want to become a SEO specialist. No, really! I’ve been beating around the bush for a long time, but I still haven’t mastered this science. Of course, I know how to optimize text, I can put together a decent semantic core for an article and I know what is “gray” and what is “black”, and I am also aware of most of the factors influencing ranking. This knowledge is not enough to promote the site, but I can definitely handle the content.

The idea of ​​learning SEO came to me a long time ago when I was trying to become a millionaire, just like Zuckenberg. What I did then:

1. I read the exact definition of the word SEO in various sources (both English and Russian).
2. I read the book by Ashmanov and Ivanov “Optimization and promotion of websites in search engines ah,” I didn’t understand much.
3. I started reading Devaki’s blog blindly.
4. I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube.

To be honest, I never learned how to become a good SEO. I just didn’t understand how to connect the acquired knowledge and put together a complete picture from all the scraps.

My advice is this: to learn SEO website promotion, you need to hang out with SEO experts. No, not with your classmates/classmates who think that they are cool guys and it’s time for them to create their own business. And with those who have been practicing SEO for a long time and successfully. For example, with us;)

Our blog is full of articles that clearly convey to a beginner everything that a beginner needs to know to make their dream of becoming a SEO professional come true. Welcome!

Vladimir Shestakov

Became an SEO specialist on my own thanks to my curiosity

I used to be a webmaster. I looked at my SEO colleagues for a very long time and envied them very much. It seemed to me that their work was very interesting and, as it turned out later, I was not mistaken. Soon, envy strangled me so much that I decided to leave the heated place of plankton and become, for now, a non-professional search engine optimization. Thanks to a long-standing personal interest in web technologies, I quickly got to the heart of the matter. At first I tried to learn SEO website optimization from my former colleagues. They advised me on books, blogs, and told me what and how they do. To keep up with trends and prospects, I became an avid reader of many SEO blogs, which helped me learn SEO from more than just the technical side of things. Finally, I attended several workshops that gave me even more insight into my work.

Later I began to practice and run errands and routine work the guys who were my mentors. And later he began taking on freelance projects. Several years of experimentation, chasing trends and complete immersion in the issue made me a true professional.

And to everyone who wants to become an SEO, I would like to say this: a passion for technology helps you achieve success. If you are curious, like to get to the bottom of a question, you want to have some “ secret knowledge“, then yes, everything is ahead of you.

Anna Serebryakova

Head of SEO Department. Advises you to immerse yourself in your work

It would be like this: in 2010, when I was on maternity leave and had nothing to do, I came across the blog shakin.ru and read it all in a week. I was literally hooked. Then the search forum, then a lot more data... I just read non-stop. Then I found (or she found me) an interesting vacancy: “We need a SEO specialist to join the studio staff.” So I began to learn SEO promotion.

In general, the most important thing in SEO is daily training, complete immersion in the profession and the desire to reach the truth of what you want to comprehend. There are also some nuances: the result of promotion depends on many factors, and finding the perfect combination is a real art. As they say, you can play badly by accident, but you can’t play well by accident. Becoming an SEO specialist from scratch is possible only through complete immersion in work, given that the projects must be versatile. In this case, the statement “the more the better” works 100%. Let you do something wrong at first, but then you will understand the line between what works and what doesn’t work.

Roman Muller

Believes that you just need to try

How did I become an SEO specialist on my own and practically from scratch? The first time I tried to do SEO was in 2012, in the spring. I remember how I collected LF for my website. mobile applications just digging into the depths of what was then still “Magadan”. I collected the keys incorrectly, received a drop from the potential sea, but still the units were somehow found. I also had experience in SEO optimization for online cinema (for Russian TV series, to be more precise). Again, there was a wrong approach to work and the maximum was about 1k units per day, monetized mainly with teasers and advertising in the player.

Eh, it was a great time when you could just spam links and get to the TOP. Now we need high-quality links and we need to work with sites in more detail and scrupulously. The situation is changing in better side for users, there are now more and more high-quality sites in the search results, and learning SEO promotion is becoming more and more difficult. This has its pros and cons: popular engines like WordPress already have hundreds of different SEO plugins, which undoubtedly makes life easier.

How to learn SEO promotion? The advice is simple: try, even if you doubt it, even if you are sure it won’t work out, just try. Well, this advice is not only for the SEO area ;)

Igor Ivanov

A real dinosaur of the Internet and, in addition, the head of the studio. I am sure that you can become a good SEO specialist from scratch only through suffering

I started with the search in 2006, but there was only some useful information there. To get even a crumb of something worthwhile, I had to look through tons of shit and all sorts of nonsense. I experimented on my projects, or rather, I made projects specifically to test something. I spent a lot of money... it’s scary. But that was the only way understanding came. Yes, it still is. Nothing much has changed. Information on the Internet can give a reason and direct thoughts in the right direction. But one way or another, everything still has to be double-checked and analyzed.

After the search, valuable information began to appear on the blogs of SEO specialists, “homeless people”, and the search generally became some kind of rubbish. Over the past three years, blogs have already been closed or there was nothing to write about. Now you are interested in webinars or social network: You can find a lot of interesting things in the feeds of specialists.

To become an SEO specialist from scratch, you need practice and only practice. Only in person can you understand how everything actually works (or doesn’t work). And it is also important to understand that practice is not one or two projects, but several dozen.

What is SEO?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)- these are measures to optimize a website that increase its position in search results. The ultimate goal of attracting traffic is monetization of an Internet resource.

The impetus for the development of this direction was the expansion of the information field on the Internet and the emergence of search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Yandex). By entering a query, the user received feedback in the form of a page with search results, search engine results page. The search engine architecture included:

• Interface (the part with which the user works to enter a request);
• Search robot (collects data from pages, documents or pictures);
• Indexer (optimizes search for processed information).

The first to talk about the possibility of using search algorithms to promote websites Danny Sullivan, California-based technology journalist. He published the article "Search Engine Webmaster's Guide" in April 1996, where he introduced the concept Search Engine Marketing, which includes SEO as an optimization tool. In his publications, he wrote about attracting search engine interest to sites artificially.

How and for whom does it work?

The idea of ​​optimizing websites for search results marked the beginning of the formation of a new industry in IT and business. After just 20 years, we have a rapidly growing digital marketing industry, the nuances of which a young specialist will have to understand in practice.

Let's start with the obvious: who needs SEO optimization of a resource?

Who needs SEO?

The correct answer is everyone who wants to attract users to their website. These can be both commercial organizations and individuals who simply blog.

Now let's figure out how this magic works. When promoting websites, you should have a good understanding of their structure. If the first generation of sites was created without regard to design and user experience, filled with tons of texts with explicit keys, then the sites we use today have become a high-quality product with a user-friendly interface, thoughtful design and optimized pages.

Search robots analyze websites and remember their content. Each resource is assigned a value by which it can be easily found and displayed on search query. The website ranking formula includes more than 1000 indicators. Many factors remain unknown even to developers, since machine learning technologies began to be introduced in 2009. Influencing known ranking criteria improves page relevance.

Internal and external optimization of work

In the first case it includes:

• Formation of the semantic core;
• Work on the structure;
• Optimization of texts and images.

External optimization is designed to increase the link mass. If previously purchasing was enough, now only natural links are taken into account. These are mentions of the site on thematic portals, sites or reposts. Regular mention of the resource by users indicates that this is a SDL (site for people). Natural links should be placed on trusted sites and be open to search engines.

In this regard, the question often arises, how to become an SEO specialist?

This profession has become in demand over the past few years and will continue to remain so in the future, because there is more and more information every day. A modern person receives more data every day than fits into 170 newspapers. The desire to obtain high-quality information in a minimum time is the reason why we open search engines today.

Looking ahead, let's say what SEO may become in the future. In one episode of the British series about technology and everyday life, Black Mirror (2011), people were given the opportunity to give each other ratings that have legal value. SEO specialists in this world are engaged in optimizing not websites, but real people.

It is impossible to improve your skill without theory. To save time, go study terminology here. Understand the basics in detail:

• How to compose a semantic core and what tools are suitable for this.
• Guide to working with Key Collector.
• SEO Specialist Toolkit.
• Drawing up technical specifications for copywriters and programmers.
• Optimization of texts, images and meta data.

Where to start learning?

If you are a fan of classical teaching tools, then the book Igor Ashmanov and Andrey Ivanov "Optimization and promotion of websites in search engines" will be a very useful purchase. The paper edition describes the basics well, but for up-to-date information you will have to go to blogs and thematic resources.

First of all, visit the website Sergei Koksharov(https://devaka.ru). This is one of the largest expert analysts in the field of search engine optimization. His blog is regularly updated with useful articles, webinars and other useful things.

Another useful blog Mikhail Shakin(http://shakin.ru). Its portal publishes reviews of new programs, tools and interviews with experts in this field.

Ilya Rusakov(http://seoinsoul.ru/) writes about SEO development trends, tools to help, and publishes reviews of major conferences.

Be sure to check out the channel

Unfortunately, website promotion, like many other IT specialties, is not yet taught in institutes. But the popularity of this profession is only gaining momentum every year. Many people take up this business, but not many manage to become professionals. Everything was simple before. In essence, website promotion came down to exchanging links with other webmasters and writing meta tags - keywords and description.

But now search algorithms have become so complex that website promotion has become a real science. And now you need to have a lot of knowledge in order to promote sites to the top of search engines.

So where can you learn search engine promotion? There really aren’t that many options, and everyone has known them for a long time: books, courses and seminars, and the Internet.

Books. Just a few years ago there was simply no literature on search engine promotion. And only in the last three years, books by active practitioners began to appear. I am now talking about three authors: Igor Ashmanov, Nikolai Evdokimov and Alexey Yakovlev. The books of these people have already gone through more than one reprint. For example, Ashmanov’s book “Optimization and Promotion of Websites in Search Engines” has been published for the third time. This is the book that is the best first textbook for beginners and can safely be called the “ABC of SEO.” All authors are the heads of their companies: Ashmanov is the Ashmanov and Partners company, Evdokimov is the head of the Seopult project, and Alexey Yakovlev is the head of the Seo-Study portal. For beginners, we would recommend reading Ashmanov’s book first, as it talks about the principles of how search algorithms work, and then Evdokimov’s book, Website Promotion. Practical guide", where in addition to theory there is a lot of practice. Books are the cheapest way to learn SEO.

Seminars and courses. In addition to the huge number of useless information products on search engine promotion, there are two companies on the market that train SEOs professionally. This is the Internet Advertising Academy and Specialist training center. Each center has a special course for beginners. In the Specialist center it is “Web marketing, promotion and search engine optimization of websites”, and in the Academy of Internet Advertising – “Basics of website promotion in search engines”. Compared to books, the cost of such training will be 10 times more expensive: about 13-16 thousand rubles. But there is an opportunity to communicate directly with the teacher and ask him questions. By the way, courses from the “Specialist” can be taken remotely; if you do not have the opportunity to travel to Moscow, then you can order a service - a webinar, and take training while sitting at home.

Internet. All information on search engine promotion is in open access. But it is very difficult to find it. But whoever seeks will always find. There are a huge number of SEO blogs and forums on the Internet where you can communicate and ask questions to professionals. But there is one drawback - information on search engine promotion tends to become outdated very quickly. And what worked half a year ago is now losing its relevance. Therefore, you need to be sure to look only at new entries and publications.

Dear friends, from time to time I receive letters with the same question - how to learn SEO and become a website promotion specialist? I came to the idea that it’s time to write a detailed article about this and express in it all my thoughts on this matter, and then just provide a link. Convenient, isn't it :)

It’s not a Globator in the photo, don’t think so :) I just practiced a little in Photoshop 😉 .

Website promotion is not yet taught in universities. I think something similar will definitely appear soon.

Indeed, the question of how to become an SEO specialist is very relevant. The ability to attract targeted visitors to websites to increase profits will always be in demand.

I will tell you based on my experience. Plus I’ll try to add jokes and jokes to make it more fun for you to read 😉 .

As a child, I wanted to become a clown, but life turned out so that I became a blogger and SEO :) I've always liked making people laugh. At school, university and at all my jobs, I always tried to make someone laugh. Even, I learned to transfer all my jokes and jokes to English language in such a way that it would amuse the Americans (at first it didn’t work - they have a different mentality).

I’m not upset that I don’t work in the circus - I’m slowly having fun on my blog in order to at least dilute the dull articles on website promotion with a little humor 😉 .

That’s it, I need to concentrate, otherwise I’m distracted again :)

The best way to learn SEO is by doing

In my opinion, The best way to learn something new is to learn it by doing.

I am convinced that to successfully become an SEO specialist, he must have his own website. You can create a resource of any type - website, blog, forum, community, portfolio, etc. Only on your website can you learn the basics of increasing traffic, experiment with internal optimization and try different ways promotions to find out what works and what doesn't.

I started my journey as a webmaster in 2005, creating a map website for Counter-Strike games, the development of which I was then interested in scorp.cs-mapping.com.ua. Then I made a website for Photoshop lessons. Then it was on the globator.com domain, then I moved it to globator.net due to a long-term DDoS attack. Then 8 out of 10 popular Photoshop sites from the Yandex catalog were subject to this attack, this is a different story.

I actively worked on the development of the site, wrote lessons on Photoshop, and within a year I achieved natural traffic of 3,600 people per day with virtually no financial investments (I only paid for registration in catalogs and then bought the Allsubmitter program). You can read about this in this series of articles:

After that, I realized that I really like to increase website traffic, and I started a blog site to share my thoughts and experiences. So gradually I came to SEO.

Constantly experiment

SEO is an area in which it is impossible to say unequivocally what works and what doesn’t. Google and Yandex algorithms are constantly changing, and the effectiveness of a particular method of internal optimization and promotion always depends on many factors. Plus, there may be a trivial thing - all other things being equal, the same method can work well for one optimizer and not work for another.

That is why you can find directly opposite opinions on almost any issue in website promotion, even among experienced specialists.

My advice is if you doubt something, don’t read someone else’s opinion and don’t blindly accept it as truth, no matter how much authority the person has in SEO. If you’re not sure, it’s better to do an experiment and check it with your own experience.

For example, many optimizers argue that when articles are added to free article directories, they must be multiplied (that is, rewritten so that they turn out different). I believe that there is no need to multiply them at all, because one version of the article works great. I have conducted several experiments and am convinced of this while working. This applies to both promotion in RuNet and on the English-language Internet.

I started a separate Twitter account, in which I publish the most interesting and useful RuNet materials on website promotion. I select all materials manually and publish only those that I save for the future. There are many valuable articles accumulating in my bookmarks, and I decided to share them with you. You can subscribe to this account - @ruSEO.

So, let’s put aside unnecessary modesty and quickly provide a link to the content section of the site where I publish the best materials on my blog on SEO :)

If you know English, then reading foreign promotion materials will allow you to learn a lot of useful things first-hand. You can read my article:

Naturally, we need to mention the optimizer forums. It is useful to read them, but it is important to learn to ignore unnecessary information (flood and messages without any information value). Plus, on the forums you can ask questions and communicate.

At the beginning of my journey, I communicated quite actively on optimizer forums, but I haven’t done this for several years now - I don’t have time, I prefer to do my work. Of course, from time to time I go to forums from Twitter to read interesting articles, but in general I read blogs more often, since there is more useful information and less flooding.

Here are the most popular SEO forums on the Runet:

You can also watch useful videos on website promotion and related topics on seopult.tv and megaindex.tv.

Study the websites of leading competitors

In almost any topic, the first positions in search results are occupied by sites that, according to search engines, the best way meet user requests.

Such sites definitely need to be studied both in terms of internal optimization and content, as well as in terms of the organization of structure and navigation, as well as the ways in which they are promoted.

To find out by what methods a particular site is promoted, you need to download its external links. This can be done using the paid program Yazzle (I've been using it since 2007) or using online services(I did one such service detailed video-). By following the links, you can find out in what ways a particular resource is promoted. This knowledge can save you time and money.

If you are interested, you can order from me, in which I will tell you everything in detail and then answer all your questions.

If you notice any interesting points and solutions on other sites, test them through experiments to find out whether they have an effect or not.

To become an SEO specialist, it is advisable to work in a company

Another such moment. Development and promotion of your websites is one thing. Working on client sites is different. So to speak, the next step on the path to a level 80 elf 😉 .

I personally lacked certain skills and abilities to move on to professional promotion of custom websites. In particular, I did not know how to promote commercial sites in competitive topics and how to properly buy links, as well as deal with promotion budgets. I had a lot of my own experience, but I really lacked this knowledge.

As a result, in 2007 I got a job at a website promotion company. I am grateful to fate that I was given the opportunity to work as a website promotion specialist (this is exactly the entry in my employment record).

There I ran several websites, constantly studied, communicated with other promotion specialists (Artem, Stas and Dina, taking this opportunity to say hello! 🙂) and generally operated at a qualitatively new level for myself, managing quite large budgets and buying tons of links 😉 .

I remember that I was still at a time when links from Sapa gave a cool and quick effect. It was enough to buy links for several tens of thousands of rubles, and a week later the site was in the top 3 for a very competitive one-word query. But soon this stopped, and for successful progress it was necessary to think a lot, analyze and experiment. Which, in fact, is what I do to this day 😉 .

I worked in an office from 9 to 6, and spent three hours a day on transportation, but it was worth it. Having received the missing knowledge and skills from an SEO company, I quit after 9 months and set off on a solo voyage. By the way, you can read my opus, there’s just a gorgeous picture at the beginning, I love it 😉.

In the last months of work, while communicating on forums, I found a couple of clients with whom I began to collaborate to promote their sites. I worked on their resources in my free time, often working at night. This allowed me to start earning a little extra income.

At first it was difficult, but I worked hard from morning to night, gradually more clients appeared for promotion and they began to recommend me to their friends and acquaintances.

My wife also supported me very much - I am grateful to her for that. Instead of being angry and offended at me for sitting at the computer all day with red eyes, she actively helped me and is now well versed in SEO, even though she works in a maternity hospital :) For example, keywords she collects me much better and faster, she has talent for this. When you have family support, you can achieve your goal much faster.

Summary

My conclusion is this: absolutely anyone can learn how to promote websites if they have the desire. The Internet has all the necessary information. There is nothing very complicated or abstruse about SEO. Naturally, you need to work very hard, constantly learn and truly love what you do. Then everything will definitely work out!

I wish you to learn everything you want!

Guard (): You can download Joomla templates on the portal 3cms.org.

Dessert for today - video about the monkey man: