Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

Heading to work today I was reading the Metro newspaper “aka the London Bible” and in it I read an article entitled Wikinomics.

Back at home this eveing I Googled Wikinomics and got this site http://www.wikinomics.com/.  I was intrigued so I read on. 

Basically this site is about the book that explains what wikinomics is and how you can prosper  in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value”.

If you don’t understand what wikis are, a good place to start is at the original Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) site started by Jimmy Wales.  It was the first large scale collaboration to build the world’s largest encyclopedia. 

The Wikipedia inspired a whole bunch of other similar collaborations in travel, entertainement, and other niches from engineering to marketing and even SEO.

I will be buying the Wikinomics book soon and will review it once I finished reading it, so stay tuned…

I wanted to tell you about this fantastic book I just finished reading, its called The Google Story.  The book basically recounts the story of how Larry and Serge ”the Google Guys” founded Google from its early days as a university project to the mammoth that it is today.

Actually, its that specific book that inspired me to be the best I can be in search.  It also inspired me to create my very own search engine based on the Nutch technology.

Anyway, back to my review of the Google Story.  The best thing about this great book is the way its written … like a detective story.  The author, David Vise goes deep down behind the surface to uncover the truths and realities behind one of the most amazing business stories of our time.

What makes this book even more interesting is that it recounts the life and times of Google’s two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, from childhood , through Stamford University and most importantly the years they built Google into what it is today.

I highly recommend the Google Story to anyone who’s intersted in learning more and being inspired by one of the most impressive startups of our lifetime.

Buy the Google Story today and happy reading!   

So how did I learn SEO?  … The simple answer … I taught myself.

Its not that difficult really, well not the basics at least, but the best way to learn SEO is to actually practice it on one of your sites.

Thats how I started.  5 years ago I decided to build my very own website UKresident.com, a UK immigration site.  The reason I started it was because I had just arrived in the UK and found it very frustrating that I couldn’t find a good website to help people like mysef settle in, but that’s another story all together.

Back to the topic… Having my own website naturally made me want to make it rank higher in the search results for my target keyword (UK Residency, where I currently rank at the #1 position) … (pats himself on the back).

So anway, specifically… how did I do it?  Well it was a mixture of things really but the main thing I would say was the provision of fresh daily content through the forum I had later created (more about that later). 

 When I first started it was a struggle to rank for any keyword and as a result, the traffic was abysmal.  This did not deter me however, It actually made me want to work harder at actually ranking for the keywords of choice and so I started digging deeper. 

Initially I started joining most of the SEO forums out there but the main one I focused on was WebmasterWorld (a great site by the way and run by an equally great guy, Brett Tabke).  Most of the forums talked about fresh content and the concept of becoming an authority in one’s field.  They mentioned that one way to do it is to establish a forum where experts respond to people’s questions, and so I embarked on creating that mythical forum.

I managed to attract UK immigration lawyers who were happy to respond to people’s questions in return for getting publicity for their firm.  And this is how the UK resident forum became an authority in its field.  Driving thousand of new users, links and fresh content on a daily basis.

However, the forum was not enough.  I wanted to learn more about SEO and specifically, how to make this fresh new content rank higher,  however, I wasn’t really sure how I would do that. 

This is where SEO Book fits in.  I decided to buy an online copy of this raved about book to see what the fuss was all about and what do you know, it actually was a fantastic book!  It goes through the who SEO process from Keyword research to implemeting the research findings in both onsite as well as offsite SEO activities.  

The best thing about this book however was the way it was written, -a very casual sort of way.   Aaron Wall, the author of the book writes in a manner that makes learning SEO fun and un intimedating. 

So armed with Aaron’s advice, techniques and tips as well as all my ongoing learnings from the SEO forums,   I was now in a better position to optimise my site to achieve the rankings I want.