Experience: Gained, Shaped, and Shared

The experience point system in many video games best describes learning in general. As your player-character accrues more points, he or she unlocks new skills and abilities to give him or her a better edge in battle. Broadening the skill pool opens up doors to more effective tactics to go toe-to-toe with the final boss.

Experience points are hard to quantify in real life, but you don't need to. You can easily tell an authority on a subject from a complete newbie by looking at the signs. Has the person worked for multiple companies or clients and wrote several books related to the industry? Has he or she travelled in so many places that he lost count?

The SEO learning cycle has a similar structure. Newbies are most likely a stickler for rules, but the pros make their own (without earning the ire of Google, of course). The principles governing SEO today were made by people who have seen SEO evolve from keyword stuffing to content creation. Ideas at first that have turned into principles and have become common knowledge over time.

From these principles, more people will try to create new ones, eventually shaping SEO to a newer but more effective form. Those who have been there to witness its birth are well in their place and position to speak about what it means to be experienced in the intricacies of search engine optimisation for online marketing purposes.