Help...Aspiring SEO Pro has a dumb question!

Allright, for many in here this will seem like a dumb question. I'm good with SEO, but am not a web developer. I have a basic understanding of html and know how to optimize a website's code. However, I have been working as an in-house seo for about 3 years now and have had the luxury of using a webmaster to implement my seo plan.

I want to do some freelance work. I am great at designing effective seo plans and keyword research, but I've never actually done the on page optimization. I typically direct others.

As a freelance I would need to do this type of work. What is the best way to gain access to a client's site and edit the html for SEO purposes? Do I need to buy design software like Dreamweaver or XSitepro? Or can I just use an ftp client like Filezilla to download the site, edit the pages and upload the changes? Is it that simple? I'm currently at a fortune 250 company in the US and I believe they use Dreamweaver here, but I don't even know for sure. I just submit change requests and the work gets done with great results!

suggestions please?!

First, welcome to SEO Chat! And may I be the first to say that it's not a dumb question if it's something you've never done before.

That said, *I've* never done it before either, so hopefully someone who knows will respond to this thread. Here is my impression, take it for what you will.

I believe it is entirely possible to do the second thing you suggest (use FTP software, make the HTML changes, upload). That said, it's been my experience that working with HTML and making changes can be more complicated than it has any right to be. You need to be able to see how a change you made affects the entire page -- and if it appears that something you did caused an unexpected change, you need to be able to track down the problem fast. For that, design software is useful, but before purchasing anything I'd see if you can get a trial version of the software and play with it EXTENSIVELY to make sure you can learn how to use it and be comfortable with it.

I hope this helps...and that I'm not too far off target.

I'm in a similar situation, except I'm in-house for a much smaller company and not for nearly as long also not trying to do freelance SEO, but rather build up my own e-commerce site. I've just started getting serious with figuring out the design side.

Filezilla is as good as anything for transferring files (imho). What you use to edit your code is a matter of personal preference - I just use notepad half the time when working on CSS or HTML, but I'll use a real editor when working on PHP or lots of files at once. Dreamweaver is great but if it doesn't fit your budget, there are decent WYSIWYG editors out there for free.

If you're serious about learning this stuff, you should build yourself a website from scratch. This will give you a much better understanding of how to work on other sites later down the line. You don't want to be working on somebody else's pages without a fundamental understanding of how such a page is built.

Do a google on designing webpages with Photoshop or Gimp (free) - that's where I started. First you design your page, then dice it up and stitch it back together as a website using CSS/HTML. The implementation isn't too difficult - coming up with a good looking design that you like is the real challenge (that, and learning how to work with Photoshop!).

There's a lot to learn, but it's fun stuff to know. Do a lot of reading, ask a lot of questions. This place is a great resource, use it well

My experiance is the other way around, I'm a coder that got thrown into SEO.

I think that with HTML a little knowledge can be potentially dangerous. In particular validation which in itself has a bearing on seo performance. You could change something that isn't to HTML standard and have an adverse effect too.

If you have a good understanding of HTML, CSS and any other coding language thats been used (javascript and AJAX maybe) then textpad is free and easy to use software. However Dreamweaver can be brilliant if you're not sure what certain tags or elements are allowed etc. I'm not certain but I don't think it has build in w3c validation, maybe there is something out there that does it, in which case that would be even better!

In my experiance, as what UberDude said, you can only truely learn HTML and coding in general by doing. If you're going freelance than make your won site to promote your skills and gain experiance along the way.

Additionally depending on your clients size and experiance you may find you need no code knowledge because they use a CMS (Content Management System), we do this. Which mean you just fill forms in and the templates just produce the page for you. In which case they will need to do all the changes.

But however making your own site or working on a small scale site its as simple as using a FTP bit of software, which can sometimes be provided by the domain host, most of them are WYSIWYG and with a little computer knowledge you'll be fine.

Sorry this is so long, got carried away, hope it helps anyway.

Don't let it worry you, my coding skills are very limited and that's why I outsource. There is sooooo much involved in SEO you will never be able to do it all yourself.

Your time is much better spent briefing the troops and sending them off into battle.

If any of you need a good developer to help with your on page then let me know. I use a great guy and he is very reasonable!

Dream bigger.

You can hire an Indian designer (or coder) anywhere and at any time and the cost can be as little as $50-$100 per customer.

It would cost you significantly more and take significantly longer for you to learn to do-it-yourself.

Lastly, today, SEO isn't about on-page optimization... that area is like 10% of the work... content creation and link development is 90% of the SEOs job 'today'.

Valid HTML code has ZERO effect on rankings.
Dreamweaver does build valid code and has a validator built in.

I suggest the outsourcing method mentioned.

Secondly I suggest using dreamweaver as all that needs to be done onpage in SEO can be done via the visual interface. Code is not necessary for SEO.

Wow, thanks to all of you for the insight. I do plan on outsourcing much of my work. I know the onpage optimization is generally simple. for example, a friends site I will work on in exchange for a reference just needs optimized title pages and H1 tags. His text content is pretty well optimized with the exception of a few mis targeted keywords, meaning he just needs to change the terms to ones that are more commonly searched for. "snowmobile" vs. "sled."

So my question really is can I just make these edits w/ notepad and then ftp the changes? Is it that easy?

Is it possible to outsource content creation as well? I can't imagine a content creator in India or Phillipines being very proficient at english content creation.

What about best place for outsourcing link building? Odesk or getafreelancer? or others???