About Me

Name: John Shehata

Occupation: Director of SEO & Social Media for Advance Internet Inc.

Advance Internet is a leading creator of highly interactive local web sites created in affiliation with newspapers owned and operated by
Advance Publications Inc. owner of newspapers in 22 cities as well as Conde Nast Magazines; CondeNet; Parade; and Golf Digest.

About Me: I started as a Java Developer, and then moved to programming web based applications. In 2001 I started developing web sites in PHP, back then I discovered SEO and I was in love :)

SEO is not just a job for me, it is a passion. I worked on all types of site; small and large, fortune 500 and 1000 companies, English, Arabic and Spanish sites.

I believe an SEO Specialist must have technical and editorial skills. SEO specialists must know how develop a vision with clear strategies and tactics.

5 main skills an SEO Specialist must have:

1- Technical Background: analyzing code, understanding new technologies and its effect on SEO

2- Editorial Skills: An SEO Specialist must be able to write good copy, i am saying to be a reporter or and editor but only to have the ability to write good content. Keyword placement is not stuffing keywords in the text, it is an art that is gained through practice and experience.

3- Keyword Research: Keyword research is not just research keyword popularity, but understanding search trends, search intentions, search cycle, KPI, conversion points, etc.

4- Strategy and Tactics: Knowledgeable specialists are good in good in tactics, but a good SEO is implementing tactics to serve the main strategy and vision for the site. Strategy comes first then tactics.

5- Innovation: think out the box, don’t be afraid to try new techniques, discover and research.

I specialize in News Optimization, so far i trained over 25 newspapers on writing for the web and optimizing for Google News. Here are some of the newspapers i trained:

Alabama
The Birmingham News,
Press-Register

Ohio
The Plain Dealer

Massachusetts
The Republican

Michigan
The Ann Arbor News
The Flint Journal
The Grand Rapids Press
Kalamazoo Gazette

New York
The Post-Standard

New Jersey
The Star-Ledger
The Express-Times

New Orleans
The Times-Picayune

Oregon
The Oregonian, Hillsboro Argus

Pennsylvania
The Patriot-News

Staten Island
Staten Island Advance

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