Who's Tedster? If You're an SEO, You Should Know

[reseller]

We know him as Tedster. Its time to know more about the man behind the name!

Who's Tedster? If You're an SEO, You Should Know [seomoz.org]

[Brett_Tabke]

Hey - that is an awesome article - congrats and thanks Tedster!

[FromRocky]

I know him even I'm not an SEO.

[youfoundjake]

Heeh, good to know.

[soapystar]

but who is reseller?

[trinorthlighting]

Yea, who is reseller would be an interesting one...

[sem4u]

A who's who of lots of people on this forum could be very interesting...a lot of the best people don't have much in their profile.

[edited by: sem4u at 8:52 pm (utc) on Feb. 15, 2008]

[WiseWebDude]

More importantly, who is WiseWebDude?

;)

[kamikaze Optimizer]

Excellent article Ted!
I have, for some time now, paid careful attention to your posts and have gained some great insight from them.
Thank You

[venti]

Nice article, congrats Ted! There are a handful of SEOs that post on this site that seem to have a real understanding both the art and science to SEO.

[ergophobe]

>>arguably the most well-known poster at WebmasterWorld.com.

Who exactly is arguing?

[tedster]

Thanks for the kind words, and the rest of the banter, too. Feels like hanging out around a table at the pub.

[youfoundjake]

Thanks for the kind words, and the rest of the banter, too. Feels like hanging out around a table at the pub.

Glad you feel that way, next PubCon, the first round is on you!

[McMohan]

It is so selfless of Ted to be spending so much time answering people's problems. I get a serious doubt if Ted is married at all, and if he has, I really appreciate her patience with such a workaholic husband.

[added]With his knowledge, if he spent half the time he has on WebmasterWorld, for himself, he would have added a million to his bank account. We owe a million to Ted.

[edited by: McMohan at 5:47 am (utc) on Feb. 16, 2008]

[potentialgeek]

Brett, how did you find Tedster? Search engine? :?

p/g

[tedster]

Brett may chime in at some point, but in the meantime I'll tell my side of the story.

I met Brett through participating on another forum in the '90s. Brett mentioned starting a forum of his own, to try out some of his own ideas about what makes a forum good - ideas he'd formed through running various BBS systems and so on since the early '80s.

I was happy to become a member, since Brett clearly knew lots about getting traffic, setting up a server, etc. His new forum was housed on searchengineworld.com at that time - and I can still remember the excitement when he landed the matching name webmasterworld.com to dedicate to the new forum.

My becoming a moderator was a slower process. Brett asked me over and over, and I kept saying "no" because I was concerned about the time commitment - especially knowing the way I throw myself into everything I do in life.

I don't say "yes" lightly. I know that when I commit to anything in life, I always get intense - you might even say obsessive! Time management has therefore been a necessary and life-long focus for me, in order to make sure I handle all the necessities. In fact, my pattern of hesitating on any commitment may be one reason I've never been married, to answer an earlier question in this thread.

Finally, I was enjoying the forums so much as a member that I did voluteer to moderate the HTML forum here. That forum grew rather fast, and so it spawned a bunch of other forums such as CSS, Javascript, Graphics, etc.

And then the original moderator for the Google Search forum here needed to move on - that was ciml, to whom we all owe a lot for his pioneering work. The Google Search forum was extremely active and clearly needed more moderator help, so I decided to volunteer. And I'm glad I did - it's a real pleasure.

[FromRocky]

I'm also glad you did say "yes". I dropped in time to time to check on you, Ted.

[reseller]

I really admire tedster for his generous spirit of sharing his wide knowledge with the rest of us. And especially for his hard work to maintain and develop this particular forum.

Thanks a bunch tedster. God bless you and yours.

[lorax]

I'll add my own "me too" post. I owe Tedster many thanks for what I've become over the years. Not just from the knowledge he's shared here but also from the kindness, generosity and uncanny ability to get under the crust and illuminate the core of an issue. Cheers mate and thanks.

[Brett_Tabke]

I remember it was about a month after tedster became a moderator. I was flipping through the threads and answering stuff where I could. I don't remember the specifics, but a question about html came up in the html forum. I quickly answered. Long-story-short, my answer was not correct. Tedster - with the skill of a UN negotiator - expertly avoided bruising my over inflated sysop ego, and got the guy the correct answer. It was at that point, I retreated back to my Google and SEO forums and knew that the html forum was in perfect hands ;-)

[sandpetra]

Great article and a testament to Tedster's fantastic support for this site.

Shaun (Hobo)

[Cirilo007]

I have had the chance to meet Tedster for real at the last PubCon in Vegas, between two sessions. I even shake hands with him and exchanged a few words, can you imagine that ? What a honor it was for me ;-)
Really, his experience and ideas about SEO is, for me, one of the most valuable resource on this forum and over the internet !
Keep up the good job Ted !

[Pico_Train]

Indeed, good work Tedster, keep it up, you give us all reason and then some to keep coming back and discuss things.

[webdude]

Hey tedster,

good job and keep up the good work... I know that at least 80% of my posts that you have answered made sense ;-)

[walrus]

Almost every site I consult for has some foundation issue or other that can make a significant improvement in ranking when fixed

I found this really interesting as it states almost every site. What should we look for or is there a thread on this anywhwere?

Thanks again for all the help Ted !

[edited by: walrus at 9:18 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2008]

[tedster]

Duplicate urls and canonical issues are the most common. Using a 302 status for "custom" error pages is extremely common on IIS servers. If the site is substantial, then one of the issues you see in our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com] is almost always present, unless there was already some solid SEO work done on the site.

I always look forward to getting those basics nailed down so we can move on to more creative work.

[walrus]

Thanks again Ted...the Hot Topics is a great read.

[kidder]

Nice blog post - would have been good to put a face to the name...

[dailypress]

Interesting to read! :) Congrats...

[tedster]

would have been good to put a face to the name

Scroll down through the comments to see my comment - I've got a photo uploaded over there.