Need your opinion, help

Hello everyone,
I am a newbie and you all know that there is a huge learning curve for a newbie like learning about building websites, learning about various tools etc. I have read on the internet that even the experienced internet marketeer are struggling these days, moreover the panda and penguin update has scared me and i don't know whats going to come in the future.

I am not afraid of the hard work, i am ready to put efforts but i am concerned that is it worth putting efforts in this area, I just don't want to waste my time as i am not doing job, just working on this full time. it will be a pain if i failed in this, i am not after thousands of dollars, just want to make comfortable living with it.

There's a lot to talk about these days. A couple of thigns that were true last year have changed this year. We never used to have to worry about anchor text ratios and to a lesser degree, link velocity. But now we do.

I think the first thing you should do is learn whitehat, so go to seomoz and read their spiel all about how you should genuinely market an online business. Then once you know a little there and have created a copule of blogs, come back here and use the search function to help you learn about how to rank a website using webspam.

But overall, i say buy into some small blog networks if you want instant rankings that work.

Well said,

You are right that the world of SEO and web marketing is constantly evolving. These professions are a practice just like law or medicine and those who are successful at them keep up on changes in the industry and continually educate themselves on best practices.

As mentioned by the first reply, learn about white hat SEO first and there is no reason to be afraid of what Google or other search engines are doing to perfect their algorithms. Try to understand that search engines are trying hard to balance the needs of 3 competing parties; the searcher, the advertiser and their own interests. Search engines will fail if they don't serve relevant and useful content to their users. Focus on developing quality content for your audience and you will be rewarded.

Keep up to date on industry news by reading the blogs and following the social media accounts of industry leaders. SEOMoz is a good one along with @randfish - Rand Fishkin the organization's founder. Another good resource is SearchEngineLand.com and you could follow @DannySullivan - Danny Sullivan, the website's Editor. Matt Cutts -- @mattcutts who is head of the webspam team at Google is another great resource.

Once you have a firm footing in white hat SEO, you should also learn about black hat tactics. Although some may not agree, you should avoid using these as they are not effective for long term success but knowing what they are will help you understand what is happening in the industry and help you avoid using them.

Here are some additional resources to get you started.

http://www.seomistry.com/2011/05/14/top-seos-to-follow-on-twitter/

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo

Best of luck on your SEO initiatives!

Shawn