you need to know how search engines work. And when I say search engines I do mean ALL of them as google is slowly dying for the average guy (only the rich and the nerds can make money with google nowadays), but the good news is that more and more people are moving away from google to other search engines.
Someone said 2 days ago that 70% of his traffic comes from bing, yandex and DDG and that it converts even better than google's traffic (which is understandable when you see what garbage ranks in google nowadays which forces people to use other SEs).... Another forum member had said some months ago that he's making $1000 with Bing, which might, or might not be a lot, but it's still money that can pay the bills. But the point is that other search engines become useful, so you should not limit yourself to google
Now, the good news is that if you learn how to rank in google you will probably rank in the other SEs on inertia since every SE is way behind google when it comes to innovations.
Now, to answer your question, I would say you should invest 2 resources into 2 different venues:
1) invest money to hire a SEO expert (a genuine one, not "experts" that will boost your site's DA for $10 on Fiverr) to teach you the dirty tricks of this industry, that most people don't know about (this will probably cost you a lot upfront, but if the expert is really an expert you will cut down the learning time by a lot)
2) invest time into this forum. Maybe you can't be on it 24/7 like many of us, but start watching the WH and BH forums and when you receive an email with a subject that sounds interesting you can click on the link to read it, even follow it so you can see what people say.
Doing this with 10-20 threads a day consistently for months will open up your eyes to a lot of things that you would not be able to learn otherwise. Just set aside 1-2 hours a day to weed through the emails and read a few threads of interest and you'll see what I mean
After you invest into these 2 things - and since building sites is already a 2nd nature to you - you could set up 5-10 websites per month with various scenarios (fresh domains vs expired domains, quality content + bad links vs garbage content + good links, sites with keyword research vs sites with no keyword research, etc...)
Basically, put what you've learnt into practice, but in a fun and practical way so you can have many different sources (both theoretical and practical) of comparison against each other to understand how this industry works. And I guarantee you that after 2-3 months of doing these things religiously each day (+ the knowledge you will have gotten from the real SEO expert) you will have learned about SEO more than most people do.
Of course, you will probably burn through a lot of money to run all of these tests, but they're necessary because the best SEO knowledge is the one that you acquire by testing things yourself. Despite of what you might think, or whether or not you believe it, Google does have an insane number of rules and filters for everything under the Sun. No 2 niches are identical, no 2 keywords in the same niche are identical, no 2 sites that target the same keywords in the same niche are identical, no 2 fresh or expired domains with the same authority are identical and could be treated completely differently by google based on god-knows-what rules and filters, etc...
So, it pays off to run tests yourself even if you're not going to do this long term. You said that knowing a few things about this industry before upselling SEO services would not hurt. And I agree with this. And you can get that small edge simply by investing some time and money into trying things out for 6 months let' say.... and after that you can stop trying (you should still keep on reading and learning though, as SEO is constantly changing)
if you know the theory and don't intend to practice SEO yourself not really. But if you do intend to rank sites you do want to know where you can break in as not all niches are easy to break into. For example, if your starting niches / industries are the ones below (and not only) I'd say you don't even think about it
- scholarships
- forex trading
- insurance (all types of insurances are tough: car, home, health, pets, etc)
- medicine and health (surgeries, weight loss, etc)
- gambling / casino
- online banking
- web hosting
- politics and news
- high ticket items (luxury resorts, cars, yachts, jewelry, etc)
- real estate and home staging
- education in general (scholarships as I mentioned earlier, but also home schooling, long distance learning, etc)
- online business
- SEO
- relationships and relationship advice
- psychology / psychiatry / hypnotism
I'm not saying that no one can rank in these industries, as people keep outranking each other each day. All I'm saying is that these industries require a lot of SEO knowledge (and not just the "white hat" type of it), but also a hefty MONTHLY budget.
if you're not stupid like me and can understand technical SEO follow
@splishsplash 's posts. The guy's a genius, and some of my SEO knowledge comes from him even if I don't understand a lot of the things he says nowadays (my poor brain is focused on helping people, enjoying nature, playing video games, I have no idea about AI and LLM, about schemas and knowledge graphs, about programmatic SEO and all of those nonsense idiocies that are alien to me).
But, unfortunately, google are raising the SEO bar so high that people like me can't adapt anymore because the knowledge is too advanced and too technical (which is why I said earlier that SEO has become the heaven of geeks and nerds nowadays)
So, start following the posts of people like Splishsplash and a few others (won't name them because I don't remember their names at the moment)... oh, also
@tiiberius , that guy is also good at SEO, I've learned a few things from him myself.... if you want to get into expired domains
@Nargil knows more than anyone I've seen on the forum....
But there are more knowledgeable members, not just 3. But start with these and you'll learn more than John Mu can ever teach you
this one is tricky to answer. Personally, I have seen sites that didn't even exist in google's index, but as soon as they've bought Google Ads they got indexed within minutes and even ranking in top 3. I've not seen many of them (maybe 4-5, I don't know), but I have seen. So, for those sites Google Ads have been a ranking signal, but I'm not sure this works for all sites and across all niches. Like I said earlier, google has rules, filters and exceptions for every god damn thing under the sun, which is why you have to test and try everything yourself....
in 3-5 years google might not even exist anymore as a search engine, so I wouldn't set the bar so high
To stay oriented toward long-term success I would say you need to never quit. Google wants to shed as many of us off the SERPs to make room for their butt-sex partners (usually the ultra filthy rich companies and individuals), and to achieve this goal they make the rules harder and harder for the little guy. So, if you want success with google you need to have a deep pocket and to stay glued to them like a tick sticks to a dog without ever giving up and the more sites of yours google tanks you double the amount of new sites that you spam google with. That's what I would do to ensure long-term success if I had money... or desire to keep playing this stupid game....
So, consistently you need to be mentally prepared for the long term (set your mind to being in the game until 2100 or until google dies, whichever comes first and then also tell to yourself that you're trying to rank sites just for the fun of it and that you won't care if they rank or make you money). This combination of goals will keep you motivated and persistent while also keeping you stress-free (because you approach long-term success with a playful, risk-free mentality)
In terms of practical things you should do what I said: aim for having 5-10 websites in different niches, on different domains (fresh, non-dropped, and expired), with different designs, with content and links of different quality and amount, etc... Just play with 5-10 sites a month to see which one sticks, do this consistently for 1 year and you will have gained more knowledge (and possibly money too) than if you were to follow a strict plan that google will try their hardest to make obsolete by next month
if more money come in than goes out = success.
Simplistic view, I know. But that's how I see life: in simplistic terms. Perfection is almost always simple
