What is the best way to learn SEO?
-
I was wondering if it's worth taking an SEO Training course.
If so is it better to take a live class or Online class.
Or is better to just read all the SEO Books out there?
Or is there a good video series anyone can recommend?
What is the best way to learn SEO?
I have a good understanding of SEO but I'm not a Pro ( Yet ). Obviously SEO is always evolving so even the Pro's are constantly updating their skill set but I want to make sure my foundation is solid and complete.
Advice Please.
Thank you all.
-
Thanks everyone for your tips and advice. I appreciate the help. That's why I enjoy SEO MOZ, it's a great community to be a member of.
-
One book that helped me a lot was Search Engine Optimization Secrets by Danny Dover. That one and the art of seo were my starting point. I keep going back again to both books over and over.
-
Brad has prepared a very good list.
-
Yes.. But read the SEOmoz Beginner's guide first. Don't hesitate to read the basic chapters twice.
I have read many SEObooks. None of them have been a waste of time as long as they are reasonably current. Since there have been so many changes in Google over the past year, I would read new editions of any that are published.
Also read "In the Plex". It's not SEO but will help you understand how google works and appreciate that they always have test algos running.
-
Hi Joel,
As for these books - I've only read the 2009 edition - http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-SEO-Mastering-Optimization/dp/0596518862. There was an updated version this year - http://www.amazon.com/Art-SEO-Eric-Enge/dp/1449304214/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339728490&sr=1-1 that I am yet to read but hope to soon.
Thanks
-
Hi Joel,
When I was talking about G+ I was talking more from a personal point of view, not your company point of view. I.e. just as a way of learning more about SEO.
Go on G+ and start following all the top SEOs - start with http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended and http://www.linchpinseo.com/best-seos-lego-infographic (yes it's silly but it's still a great list). Each of these people will post some great resources on G+ daily.
Interact with them. Comment, share with them, mention them in shares/comments.
Also, any social profiles you have, link to all your other social profiles. I went to your SEOmoz profile thinking I would be able to get to your G+ personal profile, but alas there was no link. You'll miss out on some easy opportunities there.
Thanks
-
Do you recommend the book "Art of SEO"? or what book would you recommend?
-
Hey Brad,
What's the difference between the Art of SEO and the Art of SEO Theory in Practice?
-
I find myself spending 4 hours a day on something SEO related. Now granted most of the time its verifying what I just read to make sure it's accurate but I hear you, it's trial and error combined with constant learning and patience mixed in.
This is time well spent.
As you learn more you will be able to back off the time spent on SEO and increase the time spent improving your site.
It is better to get a good foundation on SEO now than spin your wheels for three years and then discover that you wasted your time.
-
Thanks Egol,
I find myself spending 4 hours a day on something SEO related. Now granted most of the time its verifying what I just read to make sure it's accurate but I hear you, it's trial and error combined with constant learning and patience mixed in.
-
Thanks Brad, My Facebok campaign has worked so far, so has Twitter and Linkedin, but I haven't been able to tackle Google+ effectively yet. I have a page on Google+ and I post and invite people from my other networks but no biters. Any tips on how to start a great Google+ campaign? I'm a local Realtor so my focus is Real Estate.
-
As Ben says... start by reading the Beginner's Guide to SEO.
====================
Then start working on a website, or a couple of websites.
Experiment with them by changing the title tag, adding more content to some of the pages, reoptimizing.
As you work on them, keep an SEO Log and write down the changes that you make and the dates that you make them. Watch how it influences rankings. If you do this diligently you will learn more from this than any reading.
If you are learning you should discover that your website now sucks because your knowledge has grown. That is a great thing. Rebuild the site. You will probably be amazed with the results.
====================
Install google analytics on these websites and become a student of the sources of traffic and the queries that people type in. When you improve a 200 word page to a 500 word page watch for the explosion of new long tail keywords that flood in. Watch how great content holds visitors and crap content bounces them. ( I spend a few hours a week on this - even after ten years watching the same sites.)
====================
Pick a subject that you are very familiar with and enjoy. Then create the best content on the web for that topic and post it on your site. Watch where it ranks right away (you will probably be disappointed). Check the rankings about once a week and watch what happens. You will be impressed with what happens to quality. But, be patient as this type of content rises very slowly in the SERPs -- but in 6 to 12 to 24 months you will be surprised where it ranks.
Be careful that you don't deceive yourself into thinking that your content is the best when it is merely pedestrian. Be prepared to keep it up-to-date and to improve it when someone else trumps it.
=====================
Pick a good SEO forum and visit once a day. Watch for people who come there posting titles like... "Wah! My site lost tons of traffic." Read all of those for a while and you will quickly start to see patterns. You will generally find that they have committed some type of sin, usually with links or shortcuts. Do not repeat their sins no matter how tempting. Then after each google update read the post of the people who are cryin' and you will soon learn that google is smacking down a different type of shortcut and that google rarely smacks down quality that is difficult to produce.
While you are on these forums never listen closely to all of the advice, because lots of the advice in SEO forums is really bad advice - even when it comes from gurus and oracles. Nobody understands google perfectly and most advice given is shooting from the hip with fragmentary data - especially if the advisor has not spend a lot of time on your website and studied your analytics carefully over time.
Spend a couple hours a week poking into busy forums. You will learn a lot, find strong allies and trusted people who will be worth hiring for jobs where you lack expertise.
=====================
After you think you have learn an awful lot, go back and reread the Beginner's Guide to SEO with a great desire to improve. You will probably discover again that you website sucks. This is a good thing. Don't hesitate to rebuild properly because you will most likely receive a great reward.
-
Thumbs up for Ben. I agree wholeheartedly.
These forums are a fantastic place to learn SEO, I think I've learnt the most from interacting on here. Keep asking questions, respond to others and learn, learn, learn.
As for books, I would start with these if you haven't already:
- http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-SEO-Secrets/dp/0470554185/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1339725028&sr=8-7
- http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-SEO-Eric-Enge/dp/1449304214/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1339725028&sr=8-11
Subscribe to all the best blogs/sites out there and read constantly. Some of my favourites include:
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog
- http://www.distilled.net/blog/
- http://www.rosshudgens.com/
- http://searchengineland.com/
- http://mashable.com/follow/topics/SEO/
- http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog
Also, if you don't already, get active on G+. Like Ben said, the best SEOs respond to queries, and I find that G+ is the best place to interact with the higher level SEOs.
Thanks,
Brad
-
Thanks Ben, I've read a bunch of books, blogs and forums but I feel there are still gaps in my SEO for my site. Trying to figure the best way to fill those gaps. I'm on page one for almost all my main keywords but I feel like there is something missing.
-
I'd been dabbling in SEO since 2007 when I finally buckled down about 2 years and jumped in head first. The biggest influence on me was the Beginner's Guide To SEO that SEOmoz just updated. Then I went through every White Board Friday and Pro Webinar I could.
Followed key people on Twitter and asked some of the dumbest questions. SEO's (at least good ones) are so incredible helpful and willing to help you out. I can remember getting my first big client and I called just to get more acquainted with the Pro Tools here. Actually got to talk to Cyrus, before I knew who he was.
So basically: read, follow, and ask. With every change in the SEOsphere you become that much more of an expert.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
What are the Best SEO Website which you read daily
Hai Moz memebers, Can you pls suggest me some best seo websites that you people read articles everyday a part from MOZ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_GB1 -
SEO page descriptions on mobile - how to hide while preserving the juice for SEO?
Hi everybody, On our pages we have crafted good text paragraphs for SEO purposes. On desktop everything is fine but on mobile the paragraph of text pushes the main content really low on the page. Is there a way of hiding the text while preserving the SEO juices and not getting penalised by Google for spamming techniques? I'd appreciate any recommendations on how to deal with this. Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Firebox0 -
How to come up with the best title tags?
Hi Guys, I know title tags is one of the most important things that google looks at, any tips or advice around how I can go about improving the ones I have currently? I'm ranking pretty decent for all domains, slowly but surely, my main keywords are online psychics, online psychic readings, chat psychics, chat readings, tarot readings, and psychic readings. Any advice would be much appreciated, or direct me to resources I can look into helping me get onto the right path. my website is http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0 Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Best Practices
Okay this would be a piece of cake for most of you out there.. What are the best practices once you add a page or piece of content on your website with a new keyword that you have never used before but plan to use it with every relevant new page you add. How do you ensure that Google will crawl that page? Secondly, if you add the new keyword in the old pieces of content/ pages you have already published by editing the content to suit that keyword, how would you ensure that it gets crawled my Google. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaythDajani0 -
Best way to remove full demo (staging server) website from Google index
I've recently taken over an in-house role at a property auction company, they have a main site on the top-level domain (TLD) and 400+ agency sub domains! company.com agency1.company.com agency2.company.com... I recently found that the web development team have a demo domain per site, which is found on a subdomain of the original domain - mirroring the site. The problem is that they have all been found and indexed by Google: demo.company.com demo.agency1.company.com demo.agency2.company.com... Obviously this is a problem as it is duplicate content and so on, so my question is... what is the best way to remove the demo domain / sub domains from Google's index? We are taking action to add a noindex tag into the header (of all pages) on the individual domains but this isn't going to get it removed any time soon! Or is it? I was also going to add a robots.txt file into the root of each domain, just as a precaution! Within this file I had intended to disallow all. The final course of action (which I'm holding off in the hope someone comes up with a better solution) is to add each demo domain / sub domain into Google Webmaster and remove the URLs individually. Or would it be better to go down the canonical route?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Victim of negative SEO
Hello, I'm one of those people that got the "unnatural links" message from google. Since i run my site from the very first day and always was a one man business i know all the ins and outs of the website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Henkiepenkie
Basicly i have never ever used a seo company to submit my site anywhere.
Never ever i used any shady tactic to get better ranks.
The only thing i did was trading traffic/links with real active websites, being daily updated, high traffic, etc etc. So. After i got notified in webmaster tools i started digging into a list (provided by webmaster tools) to find out why i got this message (meanwhile i lost 75% of my se traffic in past 3 months) After searching for hours i found out that in the past 2 / 3 months my site has been spammed on about 150 forums (completely dead forums with nothing but spam on it) There was no logic at all since my site got linked with the most ridiculous and unlogical word phrases.
My site is adult related and all spam links contained word phrases like "bangladesh mobile" or "rock girl" or "animal abuse" or "ringtones" etc etc. if i ever would be so stupid to start spamming my 7 year old strong business i would at least use titles that would make sence. anyway.
I can't do nothing about these forums, i don't own them, i can't erase them and if there are any owners, they simply don't respond.
I made a list of all the forums and send it to google but the only response they come up with is "there are still unnatural links". I hardly believe they did anything with that list i send them. I don't know what else i can do and was hoping that somebody could advice me on what to do here besides sending google messages on a daily base. cheers0 -
Best way to consolidate link juice
I've got a conundrum I would appreciate your thoughts on. I have a main container page listing a group of products, linking out to individual product pages. The problem I have is the all the product pages target exactly the same keywords as the main product page listing all the products. Initially all my product pages were ranking much higher then the container page, as there was little individual text on the container page, and it was being hit with a duplicate content penality I believe. To get round this, on the container page, I have incorporated a chunk of text from each product listed on the page. However, that now means "most" of the content on an individual product page is also now on the container page - therefore I am worried that i will get a duplicate content penality on the product pages, as the same content (or most of it) is on the container page. Effectively I want to consolidate the link juice of the product pages back to the container page, but i am not sure how best to do this. Would it be wise to rel=canonical all the product pages back to the container page? Rel=nofollow all the links to the product pages? - or possibly some other method? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770