The Importance of Daily Research from Quality Sources

Let me briefly explain why forums like SEOCHAT are helping me make a decent living while working unshaven and in my underwear.

Last week I decided to take a lecture class at the local college on "Website Marketing and Promotion" with an emphasis on SEO/SEM. Why? My motives were to meet local aspiring SEO's, discuss some possible cross-promotion, see what exactly is being teached, and maybe even learn something I didn't know.

The teacher was an intelligent web designer and good speaker (energetic, enthusiastic, engaging, etc.) 90% of the things he said I knew for a fact were incorrect to a degree. 75% of that would have been spot on 1-2 years ago.

I sat, biting my tongue, praying that something of current relevance would jut out of his mouth. While being left disillusioned and having not made any quality contacts, I did finally manage to learn something:

These students grappled at his words as though they were worth millions. I learned second-hand that ignorance breeds more ignorance like a game of "telephone" gone horribly wrong. Those students are sure to share what they learned with their peers, and so on, until finally you see the reemergence of the inportance of Meta Keywords in forums and articles.

I don't learn SEO from reading books that were compiled and written 6 months to a year ago. I don't take mainstream concepts about SEO unless there's very recent proof behind it that I can access. I certainly don't accept any "insightful information" from anywhere without a heavy grain of salt.

Research= Reading proven information from quality resources as well as testing and finding your own findings.

My suggestion to all those that are interested in becoming an authority in their field is to research everyday without fail. That's what it's going to take to be the best, get to #1, and stay there.

I'll post back in a year with success in obtaining my #1 competitive keyword.

Would it surprise you to know that many professors have never professionally practiced the subject that they teach?

That reminds me of when i was doing my MBA and our managemnet information systems lecterer was teaching about punch cards ( mid 1990s) and he wondered why everyone complained about his classes...

I am a teacher among other things and i would hate to teach technonlgy. Much harder to keep your courses relivent. Still thats no ecuse for teaching crap. Write a letter to the faculty/lecturer and suggest they review there materials.

When I was in school for Electrical Engineering (EE) we used punch cards on an IBM 360 (back in the 70s).

As per what else you said: I was looking for a php class a couple years ago. I gave up. I didn't check my old college, but it is too far away now. College is becoming obsolete IMO.

I agree, Forums are the way to keep up to date.



That reminds me, I gotta put something on. I haven't had a job in over 20 years.

Cool another teacher/ex-teacher! Just out of curiosity, any other educators on SEO chat?

How can you teach something that is changing from day to day? You have to spend half of the time to get updated of what's going on. The best way is to practice, practice, practice...

I have a friend who is teaching an "ecommerce" course at a University of California school this semester. He has never run an e-commerce web site and doesn't even know basic SEO. I'm going to be a guest speaker for him. His guide is the book, "e-commerce for dummies". Guess there is some truth in that.

I guess this is why we have some job security. It seems that there are a lot of "certified SEO courses" out there, but how can students be sure their information is current? Anyone worth their minerals in SEO would be too expensive to have teach a course at any normal venue.

It's like anything worth something these days. If you want to have success, you have to understand your field better than the rest, and the only way to do this is to find the answers yourself or trust results from testing by a respected peer.