How to be an SEO noob

Posted on: Monday, December 8th, 2008

At my company, we have interviewed quite a few candidates to become part of our SEO team and, in the past, a few professed to be “senior guys” with “years of experience” under their belts. But what some of them said in those interviews and what they showed us in their “SEO portfolio” made them look like… well, SEO noobs. I also asked my 100 or so Twitter followers if they had anything to add to the subject.

Here are a few ways to be considered an SEO noob:

1.) Mention the META revisit tag

If you start saying anything about “making Google visit the website more often” via the META revisit tag or by settting the sitemap’s <changefreq> tag to “hourly”, then you are an SEO noob. (via @theGypsy)

2.) Use the META keywords tag to ‘improve rankings’

If you believe that this meta tag will make any significant difference in your rankings on a search engine like Google, then you are an SEO noob.

3.) Stop your on-site SEO work after updating the META tags

If the only thing you do on a website is change its META tags, then you are an SEO noob. (Via @seocopyandstrat)

4.) Link every keyword on a page

If you link every word in the body of your page that says “free poker” to your free poker landing page, then you are an SEO noob.

5.) Talk about adding footer links and keywords

If you want to add a bunch of meaningless keywords to the bottom of every page, all linked to the two or three pages, then you are an SEO noob.

6.) Submit your site to 100’s of search engines to ‘improve rankings’

If you associate search engine submissions with higher rankings, then you are an SEO noob.

7.) Brag about your PageRank of 4 (or ask when the next PR update is)

If you consider PageRank to be the means by which you measure the success of your work, then you are an SEO noob. (Also via @theGypsy)

8.) Consider it a success when you get on page 3 of Google

If you think that your work is done when your website reaches page 3 - or even page 2 - for 4-word-long phrase, then you are an SEO noob.

9.) , 10.) + Add your own below! I will pick 2.

I am far from a senior SEO guy, but I can spot someone who does not know what they are talking about. Please add to this list by commenting.

10 comments...join the discussion!

styletime Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 09:53
Guilty on all counts at some point and if anyone says their not their lying
Stuart Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 09:57
@styletime I never bragged about having a pagerank of 4.
Dave Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 10:07
Nice…. shall send all suspect prospects by to take the test… he he…
styletime Says:
December 8th, 2008 at 10:08
And anyone who still says they don’t have a smile when google gives them some green hasn’t been around long enough

When Styletime went from nothing to PR3 and 4/5 inner pages in a month although it means jack all apart from lots of links so must be some good content I don’t care I still smiled
Laurie Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 03:09
If you pay some Indian guy to spam forums for you, then you are an SEO noob.
DaleK Says:
December 15th, 2008 at 08:35
LOL! I didn’t even know about #1 - What’s that make me?
Tad Chef Says:
December 16th, 2008 at 14:18
Submit a post with “SEO” in the headline to Digg.
Ken Jones Says:
December 16th, 2008 at 14:23
Does being oddly proud of the fact that you rank first in Google for the phrase [big dumb noob] count? Coz I’ve had that sewn up for months
Joel Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 19:31
Not knowing what a noob means….
its a start!
Bulent Says:
February 5th, 2009 at 07:03
Leave comments for every blog post which has nofollow tag no matter what the topic of the blog is or how relevant it is to your site.

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