SEO, it's where the money's at!

Nowadays, you can find anyone to build you a website. Working in the .COM business, I've had clients hire top marketing and web design firms thousands of dollars to young high school/college students in exchange for internship hours (I use to be one of them!).

In the early 2000's/late 90's, web designers could get away charging thousands of dollars per website. Unfortunately, web designers are as abundant as the number of houses for sale on the market (in this current economy). Secondly, flash intensive sites are now overshadowed by search engine ranking requirements. When it comes down to it, how much value is an extravagant (and expensive) flash site worth, if it' can't be found in search engines?

According to Google® or Yahoo® search engines, it isn't worth much - ranking wise. Nowadays, it's all about relevant content on the websites and interlinking with relevant content related websites. Google® has a certain formula (or what we nerds call algorithm) that determines how a website is ranked in searches. These are based on many factors that are listed on your website. Unfortunately, Google® changes these factors (reportedly) once a month. Therefore, someone ranked #1 this month may not be possibly be that ranking the next month.

Theoretically, it encourages webmasters to frequently update their website with current information. Secondly, it discourages website spammers from saturating the Internet with... well, crap.

Recently, I've been thinking about furthering my education in Web Design. Realistically, it is still necessary to have those fundamental skills to develop websites. I've even thought about getting a second undergraduate degree at the Art Institute of Phoenix, just so I can claim master to that specific trade. Not to say I'm not fairly expert and educated already (I've graduated the University of Arizona with a BA in Political Science (minors in Media Arts and Business) back in 2004).

However, I'm worried with the trend of web design being readily available to anyone by anyone. In this industry, if you can master the art and dynamic of web design, uniqueness and talent will play a part whether you can get a job or not. So I've decided I'll focus on the next opportunity out there: search engine optimization (SEO for short, is the act of optimizing a website on search engines).

In my research, SEO firms charge a tremendous amount to customers. It's a tedious task to be ranked appropriately. With Google® updating their algorithms often, it takes a lot of time, effort and adjustment for a website to be ranked appropriately.

As for me, I'm getting certified on WebCEO's SEO training program via online. (See the link below.) While I'm doing so, I will further my education and training on web design and development, whether it's self-teaching or getting that second undergraduate degree.

Until then, I want be where the demand (and money) is at: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

WEBCEO - learning how to optimize a website

About October of last year, I purchased this online certification course to certified how to learn SEO using this companies software - WebCeo. I scoped it out after weeks of being hounded from my coworker to get certified (and which he is now currently self-employed providing SEO to clients at $5k-10k /website/ bi-annually).

It looked legitimate and I purchased the software. At the end of the year, with the holidays, and a few deadlines for websites needing to be finished with savinMedia, I've only hit maybe the 3rd or 4th chapter so far. Grrr.... The material is so fascinating, and it makes me want to SEO all my current websites, and revamp them so they can now be found by those Search Engine Spiders!

April and May is beginning to slow down and I should have more time to finish the course, and get certified.

It makes absolutely sense. Don't get me wrong, web and graphic design makes me happy and challenges me to better myself. However, it's not where the main revenue stream is at now-a-days. You can purchase a SITEBUILDER anywhere (ie.: website tonight available at savinDomains.com) or hire some college student for cheap labor. However, how good is it if the website can't really be found by search engines or people???

SEO is definitely where it is at next. And at the prices I've seen other SEO firms hire - a few thousand dollars per website for a short period of time - whew!

Take a look at WEBCEO via my affiliate page, and if you decide to register, register via my link:
http://www.webceo.com/cgi-bin/go/clickthru.cgi?id=savinmedia

And please POST or EMAIL me if you get certified!