One person....

I am attempting to help out a friend with their website. I have a decent understanding of SEO but probably not all there yet. I do my best to learn something new on a daily basis and trying to become more rounded.

There is often a lot of advice to contribute to related forums, Yahoo Answers, related blogs, etc. Doing this should help build trust and traffic for your site. Problem is, I am one person who knows about SEO but not necessarily about the theme of the site. How does one maximize this avenue of building traffic with little or no knowledge of the theme? How does one person frequent these avenues to make an impact?

I cant imagine that every SEO is proficient with every topic or niche out there. Are copywriters used for this? To what extent? What would something like this cost? Do you keep copywriters on retainer? Any advice on how things related to my concern are conquered?

Maybe I'm trying to become "too well-rounded" but I want to be able to cover all bases and help people out. Im curious how others are doing this and if they are outsourcing, how they are keeping costs minimal and what is considered a minimal cost?

There is always room to learn new stuff and adopt to certain environments. I would suggest that would be your best option at the start.

If all else fails and you don't see any good results in your SEO - outsourcing it would be plan B.

I agree and my goal is to try to learn as much as I can. I don't want to outsource if the time ever comes. How does an SEO cover all of their bases when it comes to content writing and contributing to forums or blog? One cant possibly know everything about everything...lol

I guess I'm talking in terms of SEO's versus site owners. Site owners generally need to focus on their own site while an SEO would need to have broad knowledge over many different verticals. I'm just curious how it's done.

Well IMO Even 5yrs of experience in SEO is not enough. SEO is the ever changing industry...all you need to learn the basics..plan,research,implement and see the results overtime...You have be within the industry to learn stuffs and watch closely whats the industry is all about

Good advice, thanks. Although my question wasnt necessarily related to learning SEO, it was more about the different verticals that an SEO will encounter and how they learn the specific industries. You may be proficient with cars while im more proficient with apples. If someone approaches me and asks for help with cars, im not in a good place to write copy or add feedback in a forum b/c I am not well versed in the car industry. Therefore, how will I help this person build traffic to their site?

I was wondering how SEO's make it work in that aspect... they can't know all there is to know about every vertical in the world. Or maybe they can and I'm just way, way behind...lol Im still trying to learn SEO stuff...

Well I already answered your question If you dont know any industry..and you have a project in your bag..then you need to do research..learn and know stuffs related to industry. You would be then called a good online marketer and then may be SEO..if you do well..as I told..its all abt research..resaerch...learn..implement and see the results overtime..thats gonna help you

I use a combination of learning about the topic I am working on, but some can be very technical.

Using good copywriters.

And just letting the site owner do the blog and forum posts, let them know how to use relevent links and then just use their knoledge - it also keeps their costs down as they do it rather than you.

I firmly agree with this which is why I was asking. The owners are very knowledgeable within their field and are highly regarded. I have mentioned to them where they should focus their efforts and they tend to do pretty well with it. In this case, its fairly easy to get copy b/c they know their industry well and are fairly good writers.

I was just stumped on what to do if I am asked to help someone out and them being poor writers combined with me not knowing their industry.

I was just curious how some other SEO's combated the content part of things. Thanks all!