How can I learn how to do SEO for others?

[kitson]

I am fairly intelligent, not by any means a natural at computers though. I am disabled and am looking for a job I can do at home on the computer (a Mac). How would I go about learning SEO so that I could be an individual provider of SEO services, are there classes for it, or online courses, and how hard/how long would it be to learn?

 

[Chris Ashdown]

I think it fair to say all are self taught by firstly reading everything about google from their web site then from either reading books and/or blogs on the subject

There is obviously good money to be made for the good players but many con artists who see it as a way of ripping people off

Like any good proffessional you need to build up slowly with some sites and be able to prove your skills by having very happy customers who will be happy to give you the credit you deserve and greatly improve your marketing

 

[fisicx]

Start with the Google guides, then have a read of SEO for Dummies and then the SEOmoz beginners guide.

Then go buy a bunch of domains and get to work on ranking them.

It's a skill that you have to research and practise. The basics are pretty simple but to really offer SEO as a service you need to develop your own techniques rather than copy what everyobdy else is already doing.

 

[darren atkinson]

Learning the SEO basics is fairly easy to be honest, what is not easy is taking that information and having the experience to apply it to specific websites to increase their rankings.

You should definitely read the SEOMoz beginners guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Then as fisicx rightly says you need to register some domain names and setup some sites for testing purposes.

Find a mildly competitive search phrase and then try and get your site ranked in the top 3 terms for it, does this a few times for different sites in different areas and you will learn far more than from a book or a blog.

This real world experience is invaluable and can't be learnt from a book or blog.

The other benefit of this is that if you manage to get some sites ranked highly for a series of fairly competitive search terms then you can use them as part of your evidence when trying to attract paying clients.

I started 'doing SEO' work on various sites over 6 years ago and it is still a learning process for me now, yes I pretty much know what it is going to take to rank a site highly for a certain phrase, but there are always new techniques being shared and changes in the search algorithms to be aware of.

 

[darren atkinson]

Just to add, one thing to be really aware of is where you are getting SEO 'advice' from, make sure it comes from a reputable source, there are many out there touting SEO knowledge who really don't know what they are on about and have never actually managed to SEO anything mildly competitive.

This advice applies to this very SEO forum on UKBF, some of the things I see written here would be funny if it wasn't misleading people as much as it can do.