How do you learn SEO effectively, with so much information out there
-
I’m reasonably new to the SEO market, but I find it hard to keep up with all the information that comes out daily. I not always sure what to believe or who for that matter present company accepted (SEOmoz).
But I’m sure I am not the only one who finds this difficult, does anyone know of accredited courses in SEO / Internet marketing, in the UK or distant learning that could give me a very good grounding.
Or if anyone just has some good ideas on how to take all this information in, I would very much appreciate their views.
Regards
Kevin
-
As far as accredited courses, the closest one that comes to mind is Market Motive which works with some colleges and has some excellent courses on SEO. (They have a couple free webinars each month that you can sign up for as well).
I have been trying out DistilledU ($40/month) which provides beginner and advanced modules on SEO and I think it is really well done.
A good starting point is to watch all the Whiteboard Friday videos by SEOMoz. They are very informative and cover a wide range of important issues.
-
Hi Eric
Thanks for the information and the addtional links. I will take on board what you say.
Kevin
-
Learn by doing. You'll make a lot of mistakes at first. That's fine as long as you're not wasting a bunch of money on it.
I focus on research and analytics. When it comes to execution, content creation, etc, I consult on it for my clients, but leave it to them or other vendors/partners. It took years to get to the point that I felt I could reasonably hold my own on the research and analytics side... Now, imagine I wanted to become a link builder or execute on CRO or something like that. It would take even longer.
There's a lot to learn. It'll take a long time. Read the beginner's guides:
- http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
- http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-resources-learn-with-guides-tutorials-and-more/35740/
- http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/
- http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
As far as keeping up goes, things change, but they don't change as fast as you think, so don't worry if you can't keep up. You're not missing much if you don't read every article or watch every video. In the end, the search engines want to give the best answers possible to their users so that the users will come back over and over and will use more of their services, so you have to figure how to get the search engines to understand that your pages have the best answers for A, B, and C customers, but not D, E, and F customers. That encompasses a lot more than strict SEO – UX, CRO, customer service maybe, SM, etc, etc, etc – but SEOs talk about so much more than strict SEO nowadays that you can learn a lot about overall online marketing just by hanging about SEOmoz, SEJ, SEL, and so on.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Website ROI for organic SEO
A potential client would like to see published industry reports on ROI for SEO projects before they commit to doing. Please could you point me to some credible industry reports that shows the direct impact of organic SEO. I think that it would help if this report had organic click through rates, an increase in organic traffic as well as ranking info. if available. Thanks.
Industry News | | a-b-c0 -
SearchDex for SEO consultation? Price feedback?
I know the JCPenny story from 2011 and read their CEO response to that. I've been pleased with my conversations with them so far and was given a reference that checked out well. Now us. We are a small business and our expertise is in print manufacturing and fulfillment. A portion of our business is running a network of retail websites related to the print business and that network generates six figure revenue, but we rely entirely on our affiliates to promote and drive traffic. I've been learning SEO for about 9 months - primarily just so that I can be informed while managing our direct to consumer initiative. But we don't have the internal expertise to pull off a campaign that is not heavily outsourced so that is why I'm open to talking with SearchDex. Does anyone have any feelings about them one way or another? Does anyone have a recommendation for me to talk to that might be an even better fit for what we want to do?
Industry News | | rickpeyton0 -
SEO Risks for redirecting sites
Hey Everyone, I've tried searching for this question, but am not exactly sure what keywords to search for so I'm probably missing the resources if they already exist... My client has had duplicated sites for years, and after multiple penalizations of those sites I was finally able to convince him to consolidate them into a "mega-site". Currently, he has a main domain, a geo-subdomain for each office location under the main domain, and a geo-domain for each office location. We plan on redirecting each geo-domain to the corresponding geo-subdomain. So, the final result will be one main domain, and a sub-domain for each office location. I'm looking for any information regarding tracking SEO data after the redirects are in place, how to guard against potential drops in SERPs, what's the smartest strategy to implement, etc... My client is very sensitive to his sites' SEO data, so if anyone has any SEO-related advice regarding redirecting sites it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Industry News | | Level2Designs0 -
Will Google ever begin penalising bad English/grammar in regards to rankings and SEO?
Considering Google seem to be on a great crusade with all their algorithm updates to raise the overall "quality" of content on the Internet, i'm a bit concerned with their seeming lack of action towards penalising sites that contain terrible English. I'm sure you've all noticed this when you attempt to do some proper research via Google and come across an article that "looks" to be what you're after, then you click through and realise it's obviously been either put together in a rush by someone not paying attention or putting much effort in, or been outsourced for cheap labour to another country whose workers aren't (close to being) native speakers. It's getting really old trying to make sense of articles that have completely incorrect grammar, entirely missing words, verb tenses that don't make any sense, randomly over-extravagant adjectives thrown in just as padding, etc. etc. No offense to all those from non-native speaking countries who are attempting to make a few bucks online, but this for me is becoming by far more of an issue in terms of "quality" of information online as opposed to some of the other search issues that are being given higher priority, and it just seems strange that Google have been so blasé about it up to this point - especially given so many of these articles and pages are nothing more than outsourced filler for cheap traffic. I understand it's probably hard to code in something so advanced, but it would go a long way towards making the web a better place in my opinion. Anyone else feeling the same way? Thoughts?
Industry News | | ExperienceOz1 -
Choosing an SEO Company
Hi Guys, My first question for the forum. So here's my question, everyone in here has something to do with seo, but how would you choose an seo company. There are many a wild claim made by so many companies. Having done seo on our portfolio for about 6 years, however now I just dont have the time to spend. In my initial inquires I have asked for examples of their work and run a back link analysis to see the kind of links they have been building for their clients but so far all I have found is a load of directory links and no real innovation. I would be interested in your thoughts of how to sound out some companies. Thanks Alex
Industry News | | alexkemsley0 -
Secondshells.com has $3k a month to spend on SEO & marketing. HOW should I spend it & with whom?
We have a Magento based ecommerce site www.secondshells.com and are looking for ways to improve traffic. Our goal is to drive sales of our products. We are in the Android tablet accessory business, since its fairly new the competition is not that great, we would like to get up in organic rankings for our keywords. We have blog updated daily, building backlinks, PR, facebook, twitter, google+, Videos on Youtube, PPC, product feeds to Bing, Google & The Find. The foundation is there but it's a lot to handle in-house. The real question is who to choose to execute the strategy & where to pick them from. There are 1,000's of companies, individuals, Elance & Odesk. Who to choose to execute is more difficult than choosing the direction. We are straightforward and intelligent and want people who can provide a plan of action, execute and report it. All white hat seomoz style of promotion. There are so many choices and avenues to pursue that it is difficult to make a decision as to which way to go. Any guidance or suggestions will be appreciated. SecondShells
Industry News | | BossMike0 -
Node.js for SEO
We've got a client building a site using node.js (http://nodejs.org/) I'm not at all familiar with this and of course need to know how nodejs impacts SEO? Are you familiar with it? Any sites you know of using it? But as I said, bottom line - how will it impact the SEO on the site?
Industry News | | VMLYRDiscoverability1 -
SEO- Entry Level Folk
Hello everyone, I'm kind of new in the SEO community, around 1 year - 1 year 1/2. I want to learn more and get more portfolio. What could be the best way? I'm working in a website( to pratice some SEO techniques ) www.rpgdicas.com.br, some landing pages: http://www.rpgdicas.com.br/builds/diablo-2/sorceress-blizzard.html http://www.rpgdicas.com.br/dicas/drakensang-online.html What could be the best to improve my portfolio and skills, offer free job SEO for family or friends? I would appreciate comments. Thanks.
Industry News | | augustos0