I would like to share my perspective of how I arrived at and benefit from SEOmoz as an SEO non-professional.  I started typing for students and doctors about 20 years ago so I could help out with the budget without putting my kids in daycare.  I taught myself to program, creating custom screens, applications and data conversion/manipulation processes to add value to my services.  I went on to win some good contracts and created work for other moms to do at home.  When I won my first corporate contract I told myself, “well, maybe I can find a job when this ends” and I have continued to say that for 20 years.  I still own and operate DataPlus but I have a weakness:  I grew a company and managed to stay busy through word of mouth and a couple of large corporate clients but I did no marketing.  You can see how dangerous that is, especially when services are being sent offshore to perceived cheaper labor as they are.  Thus my recent interest in SEO.

I knew being found on the web had to be a good thing since it's the first, and usually only, place I go when I need a service provider.  But when I checked, my site came up nowhere!  What good is a website if nobody sees it?  I searched the web for help and arrived at SEOnoz.  I found Rand Fishkin's “Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization.”  It was pretty much Greek to me but I stuck with it and systematically tried to understand and apply his advice.  I learned about:

• Keyword research
• Targeted unique titles and Metadata
• Avoiding duplicate content
• Submitting to search engines
• Writing my content for functionality and accessibility
• Using keywords in my content
• How the spiders crawl my site
• Comparing my site to competitors
• Link building
• Nofollow and dofollow links
• Sitemaps

I submitted my site to all the search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing Local.  I submitted my site to DMOZ several times but to no avail (I’m starting to get my feelings hurt).   I delved into link building with a passion (actually got penalized a bit for too many links too quick).  I check my stats regularly with Linkscape, RankTracker, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Local Reports, Stat Counter, and Link Popularity Tool.  I test and retest little changes in content for better results.

When I made my first website with Microsoft Publisher back in 1995 I thought I was hot stuff!  I blush.

I don’t claim to be an SEO expert but I have learned a lot and achieved some results.   I appreciate the advice shared and being able to continue learning from the Blogs.  Thank you SEOmoz.