Search Engine College Salutes Latest Graduates

On behalf of the tutors and staff at Search Engine College, I'd like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

Kelly Mottl
Sin Kuen Cheng
Giles White
Kimberly Bock
Mais AbuSalah
Kari Chase

Search Engine Optimization 201

Ann Schaner
Roberto Giunta
Liju John
Mais AbuSalah
Kari Chase

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

Kari Chase

Web Site Usability 101

Timothy Tyler

Link Building 101

Mais AbuSalah

Certified Search Engine Optimizer

Kari Chase
Mais AbuSalah


Congratulations to you all! Please contact your tutor if you haven't yet received your hard copy certificate or certification seal.

Please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to the Search Engine Wiki or check our Search Engine Marketing Jobs Board to peruse jobs in the industry.


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Seeking SEO / PPC / SEM Projects for Jobs Board

If you're a regular reader of Ask Kalena, you're probably already aware that we have a Jobs Board on Search Engine College. Membership to the site is free and there is no charge for advertising positions vacant. What you may not be aware of is that we recently added a special forum dedicated to short-term and freelance search engine marketing projects.

As well as the ability to advertise full-time positions vacant, employers and agencies can now post any short-term projects (including both paid and volunteer) that they are seeking help with. Search Engine College students are encouraged to use this feature of the Jobs Board to volunteer their services for projects as a way to test and hone the skills acquired during their training. The Jobs Board is also open to the public, so it's a great way to find high quality, inexpensive freelance staff for your projects.

If you've got a SEO, PPC or SEM project that you need help with, please create a free account on our Jobs Board and post your project. We'll make sure it gets in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

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Q and A: How well have we optimized our site?

Dear Kalena...

Last year I took both your SEO101 and SEO201 courses. They were very informative and I really appreciate your putting them out there for us. Shortly after completing the course we did a complete overhaul on our website and implemented many of the lessons learned from your class. I'd like to continue to improve my rankings on search engines and I'd like to begin by targeting my product pages. Can you have a look at them and give me some pointers, please.

Thank you
Jonathan

Kalena's Answer:

Hi Jonathan, nice to hear from you!

I've taken a quick look at your site and to be quite blunt, I don't see much evidence of our lessons in your SEO implementation. Maybe your web designer has changed things since you sent me this, but looking at the site today, quite a few things worry me:

1) Where are your optimized Title attributes and META tags? There was a whole lesson dedicated to this in SEO101. I can't find them on ANY page. This is mission critical.

2) Where are the search friendly URLs you learned were so important in SEO201? For example, This URL doesn't tell users or search engines anything about the page content.

3) Where's the 250 words of optimized text on each product page?

4) Is there really a need to use session ids? As stated in our lesson notes, Google has stated in the past that they don't index URLs that use session ids.

5) Your home page text seems optimized for a very narrow selection of keywords or the keyword density seems too low. For example I can only find one instance of the word "flower".

I could go on but you get the gist. May I suggest going over your course notes again, particularly Lessons 5 and 6 of SEO101.


Need more than advice? Take a Search Engine Marketing course online

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Q and A #300: How do I create tailored META tags in Dreamweaver?

Dear Kalena...

Wow - my eyes ache from such great influx of advice - I just hope you can help me here too. We use Dreamweaver, with CSS, but after a little SEO, have found that the same description has come up for every page - no good, as you so rightly say in review of another visitors site: 'You use the same Title and META Tags on EVERY page of your site! You should create tailored Title and META tags for each and every page of your site, based on keyword relevant to the page content.' I couldn't agree more, but the template puts the same description across all pages, and when you add HTML descriptions in css based templates manually, the XHTML comes up with an error, which could potentially disrupt SE's scans. any suggestions please (please, please please!!!)

Liz

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Liz

First up - congratulations on submitting the 300th FAQ to be answered here on the blog! I have a special surprise for you at the end of this post for being our lucky number #300.

But first, let me answer your question. Yes, Dreamweaver creates duplicate META tags in your pages. But never fear - there is a solution. Simply go into the html source code of each page and manually add [!-- #BeginEditable "metatags" --] and [!-- #EndEditable --] just after the editable title tags (changing the square brackets to standard HTML open/close tags). You can see the correct code and insertion example here.

Now about that surprise. As the submitter of FAQ # 300, I have arranged a special prize: a free self-study course of your choice from Search Engine College - congratulations!


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Q and A: How do I start a SEO business?

Dear Kalena...

I want to ask how do I start a SEO business? I've got some knowledge and background as I'm going through some training about SEO and would like to know more about it. Do you have any advice? I'm currently in Indonesia and I'm Chinese.

Proson

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Proson

Assuming you already have good SEO skills and experience, you shouldn't have any problem setting up on your own. Start off by becoming a freelancer, bidding for projects and doing SEO jobs wherever you can find them. Read my posts about SEO /SEM jobs for more information on setting out on your own. I also recommend reading my article 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing.

If you think you need more SEO training, you might want to consider taking one of the Search Engine Optimization training courses we offer at Search Engine College. Our Advanced SEO course even has a bonus chapter on starting your own SEO business.

If you'd like to consider alternative training options, my article SEM Industry Training: What are the Options? should point you in the right direction.


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Interviewed on SEO Study.ru

Russian search engine marketing expert Alexey Iakovlev asked if he could interview me this week for his SEM education site SEO-Study.ru.

During the interview, we discuss the early days of Search Engine College, the state of the SEO/SEM market in Australia and the amount of time required to keep up with the search industry.

Alexey has posted an English version of the interview for me to share with you.


Need more than advice? Take a Search Engine Marketing course online

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Search Engine College is Seeking Tutors

Yes, it's true! Search Engine College is growing rapidly and we are currently seeking instructors for our online training courses to help expand our curriculum in 2007/2008.

We are seeking tutors in the following subject areas:

• link building
• web site analytics
• blogging
• podcasting
• social media marketing
• online article marketing
• online affiliate marketing

If you have at least 2 years experience in one or more of the above fields, a good writing style, a following in the industry and between 2 and 8 hours to spare per week, we want to hear from you.

Think you've got what it takes? Check our Tutor Selection Criteria and get in touch.


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Number of SEO and PPC jobs has increased by 200 percent

According to this graph on Indeed.com, the number of SEO and PPC related jobs advertised has increased by 200 percent since January 2007. That's right 200 percent.

Indeed.com searches thousands of job sites and the trends graph linked above shows an increase in the number of jobs posted on those sites since 2005 using the search terms SEO and PPC. The massive spike since January this year tells the story. Demand for people with search engine marketing skills is massive!

So there are no more excuses. If you want to get trained up quickly and take advantage of the huge demand and tasty paychecks currently being offered to those with the skills, you should consider taking SEO, SEM or PPC Certification from Search Engine College.

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Hats off to Search Engine College's Latest Graduates

On behalf of the tutors at Search Engine College, I'd like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

Maria Rubalcaba
Lois Weiss
Cheryl Hardy
Ann Schaner

Search Engine Optimization 201

Maria Rubalcaba
Lois Weiss
Harshvardhan Kharshingkar
Armand Coetzee

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

Harshvardhan Kharshingkar
Jonathan Sexton

Web Site Usability 101

Maria Rubalcaba
Miriam Ellis

Web Site Copywriting 101

Harshvardhan Kharshingkar

Certified Search Engine Marketer

Maria Rubalcaba


Congratulations to you all! Please contact your tutor if you haven't yet received your hard copy certificate or certification seal.

Please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to the Search Engine Wiki or check our Search Engine Marketing Jobs Board.


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Media Relase: Search Engine College Enrolls Students in 30 countries

We decided our global milestone deserved a press release: Search Engine College Enrolls Students in 30 Countries.

You can also view it on Yahoo News and PRWeb. Spread the word!


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Search Engine College Reaches Global Milestone

We had a little celebration in the Search Engine College office this afternoon. Why? Well today we enrolled a student from Singapore, which takes our global reach to 30 countries. Yep, we now have students in 30 countries around the world. A real milestone!

We're very proud of the fact that anyone in the world can learn search engine marketing with us, provided they have access to a computer and an Internet connection. Here's to expanding our reach to another 30 countries!


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Podcast Interview

I did my first podcast interview yesterday. I was invited by Mike Taylor of Jobs in Search to talk about Search Engine College and what role industry certification plays in getting a job in search.

I was pretty pleased by how well it turned out and how enjoyable it was. I'm hoping to introduce podcasts on this blog soon and it was a good practice run for that. So if you want to learn more about how I got started in search, or where the idea for Search Engine College came from, or if you just fancy hearing a guy with a strong British accent interviewing a girl with a strong Aussie drawl, check out the podcast.

Thanks again to Mike for the invitation. Perhaps I can return the favor when I get around to setting up podcasting on this blog.

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Congratulations to our latest Search Engine College Graduates!

On behalf of Search Engine College and our tutors, I'd like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

Harshvardhan Kharshingkar
Nick Swami
John Jodrell
Jonathan Sexton

Search Engine Optimization 201

Nick Swami

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

Jason Singleton
Nick Swami

Web Site Usability 101

Nick Swami

Congratulations for successfully passing your respective courses and qualifying for certification. Please contact your tutor if you haven't yet received your hard copy certificate or certification seal and please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to the Search Engine Wiki, check our Jobs Board or just to say hi.


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Article on SiteProNews

I was thrilled to see my article SEM Industry Training: What Are the Options? on the front page of SiteProNews today. SPN sure know how to provide traffic!

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Website vs Web Site

When I'm grading student assignments for our Search Engine Optimization courses, I often come across alternative spellings. Some are regionally based, such as "optimization" versus "optimisation". But today I want to comment on "website" versus "web site" which I'm seeing a lot of confusion over.

There are conflicting arguments about this, but in academic circles, the correct version is considered "web site" as two words in support of W3 standards. Sites such as the Chicago Manual of Style Online insist that the two word version is correct formal usage. Then again, a search for "web site" on Wikipedia.org redirects to their definition article for "website". Dictionary.com also suggest "website" is the most commonly used form as it has developed in usage:

Usage Note: The transition from World Wide Web site to Web site to website as a single uncapitalized word mirrors the development of other technological expressions which have tended to take unhyphenated forms as they become more familiar. Thus email is gaining ground over the forms E-mail and e-mail, especially in texts that are more technologically oriented.

But perform a Google search for both versions and you’ll see that web site is much more common than website.

Personally, I believe you should always use the two-word version in your site, particularly in your Title and Description tags, because search engines won’t be able to distinguish the two words if you bunch them together as "website" and you might not capture as many searchers. If you use "website", you might also isolate pedantic readers who feel "web site" is the correct spelling. Consistency is key, no matter which version you decide to use.

So readers: which version do you prefer? Tell us via comments.

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The PayPal Punk Purchase

Some days I wonder at people's stupidity and ignorance. Honestly, I could scream right now. Yesterday we had someone place a large order for Search Engine College courses through our PayPal shopping cart. Nothing wrong with that right? No, except that they only paid 0.01 at the checkout, leaving an unpaid balance of $1,174.99. We immediately received a "Fraud Detected" message from our cart system and so I didn't pass the order on to be fulfilled. I sent an email to the purchaser explaining the situation and asking him to complete or cancel the order. No response.

Today, I receive an email from PayPal saying that the purchaser had opened a dispute for the payment made, indicating that they never received the item. Of course they never received the damn item. They only paid 1 cent for a $1,175 order! And they decide to lodge a dispute with PayPal just to be reimbursed the 1 cent they paid? Phleeeaaaze! I refunded the 0.01 and they closed the dispute. But what a complete waste of time. I should bill them an hour's consulting! Sorry to vent, but sometimes a blog is a good way to get these things off your chest.

Aaaah. I feel better now.

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Subscribe to our Search Engine Articles Feed

Unless you are a student of Search Engine College, you may not be aware of this, but did you know that we offer an extensive library of Internet and search engine related articles? It's true! Our articles cover the following subjects:

Affiliate Marketing

Article Writing

Articles by SEC Tutors

Blogs and RSS

Copywriting

E-Books

E-Learning

Home Based Business

Internet Marketing

Keyword Research

Link Building

Pay Per Click Advertising

Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Optimization

Web Site Usability

Web Site Design

All the articles are free to download and re-publish, provided you keep the author resource box at the end of each intact.To make things easy, you can now subscribe to the Search Engine Article Library Feed to provide up to date search-related content for your own site.


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Well Done Search Engine College Graduates!

On behalf of Search Engine College tutors, I'd like to offer congratulations to our latest successful graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

Vannessia Moyer
Alan Cameron
Carmel Sanders
Steve Cassidy
Randy Heller

Search Engine Optimization 201

Zak Hood
Randy Plaice

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

Lise Tyrrell
Stacy Beer

Web Site Usability 101

Randy Plaice


Congratulations for successfully passing your respective courses and qualifying for certification. Please contact your tutor if you haven't yet received your hard copy certificate or certification seal and please stop by Search Engine College or Search Engine Wiki from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute or just to say hi.

Q and A: Can you give advice to an SEO Beginner?

Dear Kalena...

I am glad to know you as one of the SEO Consultants, I am SEO beginner and want to learn more tips on seo.

I want you to suggest, comment or whatever advice to improve my learnings in SEO, please see my website www.webdesignervisayas.tk and please comment and suggest.

Cartujano

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Cartujano

In terms of learning SEO, there are almost unlimited resources. You can read articles, blogs, forums, e-books and sites about the subject and here is a good starting point for those. You should also practise and tweak your skills as much as possible on as many web sites as you can.

If you are interested in training options, you can take a course such as those we offer at Search Engine College. David Temple has authored a very detailed article about the various Search Marketing Training options available which will be appearing in the next issue of Search Marketing Standard magazine, so make sure you catch that.

With regards to your site, I'm sorry but I don't provide free site assessments. These are available via my hourly consulting rates (contact me for more details). What I will say is that any site that has a META refresh embedded in the home page and a pop-up ad on the redirect page is more than likely going to send a big red flag to search engines.

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New Improved Search Engine College Affiliate Program Launched

Finally, after months of searching for the perfect Affiliate software that did everything we wanted it to, we have launched the brand spanking new Search Engine College Affiliate Program.

We finally chose JROX Affiliate Manager software (JAM) for the job after hearing good things about it and reading reviews on Tucows etc. We've spent the past two weeks integrating it into our site, testing, tweaking and testing some more and it's finally ready!

Why JAM? Well mainly because it's a super powerful affiliate program that includes follow up marketing tools and because it integrates with both PayPal and our 3rd party payment gateway 2Checkout. The features of JAM are pretty impressive, as are their groovy 3d Flash-based graphs and charts displaying affiliate referrals and commissions.

So what's on offer in our affiliate program? For starters, Search Engine College affiliates earn up to $179 per conversion. That's right! You earn 15% commission from every course registration that results from your referral and you get a $2 bonus just for signing up.

You don't need to be a student at SEC to become an affiliate. Becoming an affiliate is FREE. All you need to do is promote our search engine marketing courses on your site and watch the dollars roll in! No excuses - you can sign up here.

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Flight Centre Seeking Search Engine Marketing Specialist

I have just got off the phone with FlightCentre and they are urgently seeking candidates for an SEO / SEM position they have available in Brisbane, Australia.

I would encourage any Australian-based Search Engine College graduates or students to apply. Flight Centre are interested in hearing from anyone with SEO skills, regardless of your skill level, so view the position description and if you think you have what it takes, follow the instructions to apply or email them for more information.

You must be willing to relocate to Brisbane Australia for this position.

Good Luck!

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New Marketing Pilgrim SEM Scholarship Announced

Andy Beal has officially launched Marketing Pilgrim's Search Engine Marketing Scholarship for 2007.

We were delighted that Andy asked Search Engine College to be involved again this year and we've donated a Certified Search Engine Marketing Pathway course valued at $1,195, to the prize pool.

This year the scholarship consists of a fantastic $10,000 prize package, including the following items:

• A full conference pass to the Search Engine Strategies conference held in San Jose, this August.
• The winner’s article will be published in the industry print magazine, Search Marketing Standard.
• Enrollment in a Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway course at SearchEngineCollege.com.
• One month of industry coaching and training from search marketing expert Andy Beal.
• One year of AdWatcher.com service (ad tracking and click fraud monitoring) and one year of AdScientist.com service (bid management).
• One year subscription to WebmasterWorld.com.
• One year premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
• A free web analytics account from CrazyEgg.com.
• A one year Bizwatch account from BizResearch.com.
• A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
• A copy of Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book.”
• A copy of Jennifer Laycock’s book, “Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing.”
• A copy of Andrew Goodman’s book, “Winning Results with Google AdWords.”
• A copy of Kim Krause Berg’s books “Please Ring Bell for Service” and “How to Quench Your Web Site Visitors’ Thirst.”
• A cash prize ($100) courtesy of Cre8asiteforums.com.
• Link-ninja sword (wooden), throwing stars (rubber), clock, t-shirt and $100 cash courtesy of WeBuildPages.com.
• More prizes to be announced.

Scholarship contestants simply need to submit an article on any subject related to search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC) or social media optimization (SMO) before April 6 2007. Click here for more entry details. The five finalists will have their article reviewed by a panel of judges and the winner will be announced on May 21.

Andy has asked me to be a judge this year and I'm really looking forward to reading all the entries. Good luck to all contestants!

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Second Cre8asiteforums Scholarship Recipient Announced

Search Engine College is pleased to announce the second recipient of the Cre8asiteforums Educational Scholarship Fund. The winner is Miriam Ellis of Solas Web Design.

Miriam is another long-time cre8asite forums member (nickname = SEOigloo) and besides helping answer lots of webmaseter questions in the forums and running her own web design business, she is also an accomplished artist. Miriam will receive a $400 credit from Search Engine College towards any Certification course of her choice in our curriculum.

Congratulations Miriam!

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Cre8asiteforums Educational Scholarship Fund Selects Search Engine College

I'm thrilled to announce that Search Engine College has been chosen by members of Cre8asiteforums to be one of the five recipients of the first Cre8asiteforums Educational Scholarship Fund.

Cre8asite members were asked to take part in a poll over the past month to vote for the training institution they would most like to see allocated $400 US of forums revenue in order to cover search engine marketing tuition for a deserved forums member. Search Engine College came in as 3rd most popular training provider behind SEMPO and FreshEgg Internships.

It is my great pleasure to announce that the recipient of Search Engine College training for this educational scholarship is Elizabeth Able from Olympia in Washington. Elizabeth is a long-time crea8asiteforum member (nickname = ablereach) and is interested in accessibility, data analysis, seo and just about anything in between.

Congratulations Elizabeth and I hope you enjoy whichever Search Engine Marketing course you choose to take from our curriculum.

But that's not all folks! We were so impressed with the educational vision that Cre8asiteforums have come up with that we've decided to match their scholarship fund dollar for dollar so that two people can participate in our programs. So stay tuned for the second lucky scholarship winner.

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Q and A: How do I start a career as a Search Engine Marketer?

Dear Kalena...

Hi, I am interested in starting a career as a Search Engine Marketer but honestly do not know where to begin. I currently have an online store hosted with ecrater.com, but I am looking to supplement that income. I am looking for a suggestion as to how to start the new endeavor. Any help would be appreciated.

Carolyn

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Carolyn

I can only assume you are writing to me after reading my article 11 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Job in Search Engine Marketing? Apart from the tips contained in the article, I have the following suggestions:

• Scan the Search Engine College Employment Forum and these SEO/SEM job sites to see what employers are looking for in an employee and try to match your skills to the demand.
  
  
• Consider taking an industry-recognized formal certification course in SEO/SEM such as the Certification Pathways we offer at Search Engine College.
  
  
• Join Elance.com to freelance your services and bid on projects you are interested in to supplement your income.
  
  
• Practice your skills on as many guinea pig sites as possible.
  
  
• Join a few busy webmaster forums and observe and participate in discussions regarding the search industry. This really helps keep you up to date with methodologies used by the ex