A few years ago I was running my web design firm here in Salt Lake City, Utah, and SEO was the furthest thing from my mind. Nobody ever asked us about it, we never overheard anybody talking about it, and although I knew what it was I had no interest to get into it because there didn't seem to be any money in it. That is, there didn't seem to be any clients who wanted it, but there was money in it in another sense.

I started tinkering with MWI's website and soon we started ranking better for keyword phrases like "utah web design" and we started getting more phone calls and email requests for proposals. The more I worked on the site and improved our rankings the more business came in the door, so I kept tinkering. I had started reading a few online publications that covered SEO and started becoming more educated about the process.

Then along came a client who asked us if we could do SEO work on their site. I realized I probably knew as much about SEO as anyone else in the state, so I said sure, we can do that. Then along came another client, and another, and another, and so forth. I wasn't always the only person at MWI doing SEO, but I'm certainly in the thick of it now, and you know what? It's not that hard. The Pareto principle certainly applies here in that 20% or less of the SEO knowledge out there will give you 80% or more of the results that will make your clients happy. Although SEO can get quite sophisticated and more similar to rocket science than not, you don't need to be terribly sophisticated or experienced yourself to do a decent job.

Here's what it takes to become a competent SEO professional. First, there are two things you need to have, then there are two things you need to do.

1. Passion. If you don't find it interesting, fun, and exciting, then don't even get started. If you're only looking to make money then you won't do a good job and you'll end up wasting your time.

2. Basic HTML experience. You don't have to be an expert with HTML or CSS in order to do SEO. You don't even need to know how to build out a website. But you do need to know enough to be able to access a website, edit HTML files, and know what you're doing.

3. Start reading. Read up on the large body of SEO information available. Some of my favorite sites are SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, SEO Book, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Watch.

Reading on these websites will give you virtually all the information you need to become an SEO consultant, and the faster you read, the faster you'll get up to speed. You could become a decent professional within one month if you really applied yourself.

4. Play around. Get your own website and play around with it. Figure out what keywords you want it to rank for and then start looking at your competitors, apply the research you've done, and just try things out and see what sticks. There's no teacher like experience.

If you follow these steps I guarantee you can become an SEO professional pulling in $50-100K or more within six months. Notice I don't guarantee you will be pulling in that much, but you'll be capable of it. Other basic factors such as your ability to market yourself and sell your skills, your ability to communicate well with others, and your personal hygiene also exert a large influence.

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