How do you learn SEO effectively, with so much information out there

[Kevin0130]

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

[Charlessipe]

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.

[Kevin0130]

Hi Eric

Thanks for the information and the addtional links. I will take on board what you say.

Kevin

[EricPratum30]

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:

1. http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
2. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-101-resources-learn-with-guides-tutorials-and-more/35740/
3. http://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/
4. 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.