SEO Community Advice from Andy Hagans

Andy dishes out some sagely advice on how to make it in the SEO community over at Search Engine Journal. Normally, I don’t do posts for single articles, but Andy does an excellent job of catering to the ego of the blogger in me. This in itself, is a great lesson for how to be an active part of the SEO community (or probably any online community for that matter). Most any blogger will like to get their stories/ site picked up in other places. This is half the fun of being a blogger is getting people to say good stuff about ya!

This also ties in with recent thoughts I’ve been having about being a “2nd generation SEO”. Graywolf gives it a different name – SEO players 2.0. While GW’s views are a bit more on the negative side observing some dunce who doesn’t know who Mike Grehan is (which is just cluelessness and frankly disrespectful to the craft), I have some other thoughts that there are some benefits to being a 2nd generation SEO. I posted a little bit about these ideas in my SEM niche post on comparative and absolute advantage in SEO. I still consider myself a relatively new SEO, but I have been embraced by a community of people who I showed respect to, listened to, and I tried to not open my mouth too often when I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I think there is some advantages being a newer SEO, but there are certainly drawbacks. I wish I would have been around to work on the quick updating engines like metacrawler and infoseek, or even during the heydays of Alta Vista. I wasn’t though. I have, however, studied up on my SEO history, and found out as much as I could about the history of this business to be more alert to impending changes.

The idea is that smart first generation SEO’s were busy WORKING on stuff, while us newer SEO’s had an abundance of time to just LEARN, spend time on message boards, blogs, articles, whitepapers, etc. This is not to say in any way that we’ve caught up to the first generation SEO’s. I definitely have a high deal of respect for all the folks who have been doing this much longer than I, and I owe many of them a debt of gratitude for all their assistance. I like to think I help to repay this debt by passing on some of the knowledge to the next generation of SEO. I don’t see new SEO’s as a threat, only an opportunity that they will be as respectful and helpful to me as I have tried to be to all the “first generation SEO’s” that have helped me.

Sometimes the sucking up is a bit excessive, but it is also a reflection that SEO is a good community of people that look out for other folks who respect and appreciate the craft. Thanks again to all you SEO 1.0er’s who helped me to learn valuable lessons of SEO quite quickly (embrace that sucking sound:)

*added
I got my generations wrong, but Danny’s got it covered.

Todd Malicoat

More information about Todd Malicoat aka stuntdubl.

http://www.cameronolthuis.com Cameron Olthuis

Todd,

How exactly do you define a 2nd gen SEO?

Is there a date cutoff? Do you have to have a certain status within the community to be considered 1st? Or is it something else altogether?

I’ve worked with and met several SEOs over the years that I’d consider to be some of the best in the business but they don’t have a big name. They’ve been the silent ones that read the forums vs. contributing, but I still consider them some of the best because I’ve seen their results.

Personally I’m not one that’s into the whole defining 1st & 2nd gen SEOs. You’re either an SEO or you’re not.

One things for sure, people do need to respect their elders, one of the first lessons I learned in life.
site admin

>cutoff date

I guess it’s kind of a mental thing in my own mind. There are certainly many better SEO’s than myself (or even the “1st gen SEO’s” that are above the radar that have probably never posted to a forum or blog. Many of the SEO’s in the higher competition categories certainly fit that description.

I guess I’ve just been thinking about it lately since I’ve been lucky enough to get the exposure and opportunities that I’ve been given.

There’s certainly not rigidly defined standards here, my idea was just that those that are “newer to the game” should in fact respect their elders (even if they are younger) and give credit where credit is due to those that helped to pioneer our great industry.
http://www.seorock.com SEO ROCK

SEO is primarily based on experience and building on that experience. Things that have worked for others in the community and spelled success others.
http://www.notcon.co.uk Mobile SEO-ER

Just wondering what is the generation for mobile SEO developers. A lot of the SEO techniques used are the same or very similar to standard SEO techniques but are we likely to see a rise in mobile SEO as we have in SEO.

Just a thought…