Here are what I consider to be the essential readings and tools for learning SEO, in order of value:

Free Resources

SEOMoz Beginner’s Guide to SEO

My first boss had me read this guide several times before I was allowed to work on even the smallest site elements. Though written several years ago, SEOmoz has kept this one up to date. You can stick to perusing the guide online, or request a downloadable copy to be printed and read at your leisure.

After I read the guide above, I was expected to read the featured Moz blog post every day. After a week or two I was expected to be able to partake in commenting and discussing the latest with the authors and other community members.

The White Board Friday video posts are fun.

Among most digital marketing professionals I’ve spoken with, SEOmoz can do little wrong in the industry. I feel that the love for Moz stems from their open-book treatment of SEO strategy. They give away a lot of tactics that agencies might keep to themselves and openly strive to promote white-hat tactics.

Geoff Kenyon’s Technical Site Audit Checklist

This is a great tool checklist to use when performing site audits, or even just keeping track of best-practice tasks that need to continue through the life of a site. When I was freelancing, I might have used this in a white labeled format to present to clients my findings regarding the overall health of their sites.

w3schools HTML Tutorial

I consider this to be my favorite resource for html for those who are learning or need a refresher. Many SEOs today seem to have to learn HTML as they go, rather than have an understanding of it before they take on positions in digital departments. This is a great tutorial and will also provide a bunch of easy-to-reference “cheat sheets.” This particular link is for HTML basics, but w3schools has guides for all web design.

Screaming Frog

I used Screaming Frog and another similar tool, Xenu Link Sleuth, to create reports and benchmarks before I had access to other paid software and services. Now there are some enterprise level tools that do most of the scans and diagnostic checks automatically, but I still use Screaming Frog to manually dig through crawl errors, title tags, and other essential pieces of my sites.

TIP: Screaming Frog is a great resource for a beginner to do a single scan of a site and save it for reference. Use the results of this one scan to provide contextual reference when you learn new SEO terminology. When you are studying how to write better titles and descriptions, make sure to reference the scan of the property you are working on so you have a frame of reference in regard to what you are learning.

I say a single scan because if you make the rookie mistake of scanning a sight too many times in quick succession, it’s possible to set off security protocols that bog down your site’s performance — even trigger a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) on your own site.

Google Adwords Tool

Sure, this is designed to build keyword lists for PPC, but can also be a great quick easy tool for some top-level keyword research for SEO. Adwords keyword tool can help you gain relevant data relating to the amount of searches for a given term, as well as how many sites are targeting it.

Paid Resources

Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules by Mike Moran

This was one of the first print resources I purchased on the subject of digital marketing. It provides a great high-level look at the function of all the pieces of digital marketing(SEO, Paid Search, Social Media) and how they interplay. It also provides a great frame of mind in how to cope with successes and failures, learning from both in the process, and moving forward.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Secrets by Danny Dover and Erik Dafforn

This one is a fantastic guide written by SEOmoz former lead SEO. It’s easily accessible to beginners, but also provides some great know-how for the intermediate, or even expert, SEO.

With every profession, the key is always continuing your education. If you’re a beginner SEO, then start your education with this great set of resources to study and make use of while you work and learn.

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Minding my own business, and doing some trolling very important research, I came across this post from Search Engine Journal.

It appears that SEJ had posted some form of politically charged blog entry regarding the availability of firearms on Google, which turned into a flamewar about firearms and politics.

These types of posts are rarely well received following traumatic events like the shootings of the past weekend, but they are more prevalent than one would expect.

Of note in this turmoil is the effort taken by SEJ to control the situation, they removed the offensive material, apologized to the readership and have allowed open discussion amongst their reader base on their Social Media outlets like Facebook. These first steps are crucial, as most readers will appreciate the opportunity to vent their frustrations and have them addressed personally.To anyone who is interested in how reputation management works, I would suggest following this event at Search Engine Journal

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Keyword research

is the study of the search queries that are most beneficial for a given business to rank for on search engine results pages.(“Rank for” means that when someone searches for a given phrase in Google, your website is the first result a user sees.)

Keyword research takes into account the amount of times people search for a keyword or phrase, the amount of competition vying for the top rankings, and the relevance to the keyphaase to the business.

For example, Alex’s Pizzeria wants to find out which search terms would help them sell the most pizzas. They start off by compiling some basic ideas: pizza, pizza delivery, chicago pizza.

Once this preliminary keyword research is complete, the terms that have been compiled can be researched using a number of tools, one of my favorites being the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Once you input the keyphrases you’ve compiled, the tools will help provide you with an understanding of the amount of traffic a given phrase gets and a general understanding of how much competition there is.

Over the course of their keyword research, Alex’s Pizzeria finds out that though there are 246,000 searches for “Chicago Pizza” there are also 98,000,000 results for this phrase. As Alex’s Pizzeria only delivers within a 5-mile radius, there are even fewer searches of those 246,000 that are likely to be sales for their Michigan Avenue shop.

In this example, a term that is more geographically relevant would be the way to go, since most of the business of the pizzeria is walk in traffic. A term like “Michigan Avenue Pizza” would be a great one, since it is geographically relevant to the company.

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These results pages typically consist of at least 2 types of results, typically paid search results, and organic results.

Here is a beautifully designed graphical representation of a SERP, followed by some quick descriptions of what we are looking at.

1

Search Phrase

This is the phrase whose results are being displayed currently. There are 1,190,000,000 or so results for the example term “Chicago”.

2

Paid Search Results

These results are where Google makes a major portion of its billions every year. More than 75% of Googles profits are generated selling paid listings like these. Users can identify the paid listings on the SERPs because they are typically displayed with a colored background at the top of the page, though there are also adverts that will display along the right hand side of the page.

3

Organic Results

This is where the results are returned that are derived from Googles organic search algorithm. These results will often show local results as well, which are displayed when the searcher adds a local modifier to the search query. In this case, if the searcher had searched for “Chicago Sushi” instead of just “Chicago” they would have likely had a series of Google Local results before the normal organic results. These are easily indentified by their having a pin next to them, and the address where the business can be found.

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Duplicate Content

Duplicate Content is essentially content that search engines recognize as being re-posted or re-purposed. Duplicate content can be a product of webmaster oversight or sloppiness, or an attempt by unscrupulous webmasters to manipulate search rankings for their site by gaming the Google system. Either way, duplicate content can negatively affect your web efforts in the form of Google penalties and dilution of keyword focus. Here are a few of the more common types of duplicate content.

Duplicate Content By Bad Design

Many websites contain duplicate content that is the product of bad web design. For example there are sites that use the same title tag across every one of their pages, thinking this will increase their keyword value for the terms they’ve indicated. This actually tends to draw keyword focus away from pages that should be associated with your targeted keyword, and redistributes the keyword value throughout the site willynilly.

Google and other search engines try to differentiate between websites that have duplicate content caused by a server misconfiguration or design flaw, and those that are genuinely ripping off other properties. This being said, it is advised you do everything in your power to keep this decision out of the “hands” of the search engines. Here are
Google’s guidelines for duplicate content.

Duplicate Content Caused By Scraping

Duplicate content can come from within a given website, or from without. For example, a site could have the term “Integrated Marketing” as the title tag of numerous blog pages, or they could have a full page of copy describing “Integrated Marketing” copied and pasted from an authority site like Wikipedia. If the content was recognized as being indexed by Wikipedia first, then little if any value for the content will be attributed to the copycat site. Furthermore, in instances where there are high percentages of duplication across a site, Google will take measures to lower the value of offending pages.

To provide some SEO background, in the early days of SEO, black hat webmasters looking to boost their site rankings would often copy a competitors high ranking pages word for word in order to poach their search value. There were many instances of entire sites being ripped off and the subsequent impostor websites outranking the original content for a given search. Google had to make changes to their algorithm to account for this tactic, and now have systems in place to devalue copied material.

Duplicate Content by CMS

With certain Content Management Systems like Joomla!, there are duplicate pages that get created automatically when a new page is created. For example, Joomla! by standard configuration creates a PDF version and print version of each new page created. These pages are identical in content, so search engines see each of the pages past the original indexed version as duplications. The preferred method of rectifying these duplicate pages is by either A:Turning off the option in Joomla that controls this feature, or B: Blocking Search Engines from crawling the PDF and Print pages with your Robots.txt file.

Don’t give search engines an excuse to devalue your website. Avoid duplicate content!

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Long Tail Keywords in SEO are the keywords or phrases that are unique to a given business, or specific industry. Long tail keywords are typically easier to rank for in SEO, as there is less cross over between various industries vying for similar keywords. For example, numerous verticals compete for the keyword “tool,” but there are less competing for the more specific term “Dremel Planing Tool.” Therefore “Dremel Planing Tool” the long tail term would be a more accessible keyphrase.

Head Term

Long Tail Term

As a more detailed example, I once worked for a company that sold premium loose leaf teas. There are 4-5 major companies in the loose leaf tea industry who dominate the rankings for the majority of the most desirable keywords, with medium and smaller shops competing for a couple of big terms a piece. The big terms were obvious, like “Buy loose tea”, “Buy Tea Online”, “English Breakfast” etc. While we did rank for couple of solid high traffic keywords, the terms that we made a big chunk of our traffic and conversions off were more specific and often unique to our shop. For example, “Rooibos Vanilla,” a type of herbal tea flavored with vanilla beans, was one of our best performing keywords, and it’s a long tail term.

Long tail keywords are important to identify because they typically provide higher quality traffic, since the users searching for these more specific phrases are typically more knowledgeable about a given vertical. Owning the top results of long tail keywords will make sure that you are claiming all the easy to convert specific traffic, because often there are only a few (if any) companies vying for the top results for these long tail terms.

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As an SEO I always love Flash mobs, especially these ones that play out like the video above, since they remind me of scenes that play out in site traffic.

In this flash mob, 2 people start off playing a great version of the Star Wars main theme, which builds into a gigantic orchestra attended by hundreds of onlookers, whose numbers increase exponentially as the concert continues.This type of viral activity reminds me of the behavior and trends you can see in the Google Analytics traffic of a website that has released a popular piece of content. A few initial sources send traffic, and then boom, it takes off with viewers pouring in exponentially.

Anyway, an awesome video that brightened my day, and reminds me to go out and buy that Boba Fett costume that I want to wear daily for Halloween.

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435 Digital’s Director of SEO and Search Strategy Carolyn Shelby has long been a fixture of the SEO conference scene. She is a veteran speaker and panelist, and 435 Digital is proud to have Carolyn represent us at this years PubCon in Las Vegas.

Carolyn’s spotlight session today will focus on preparing for some of the worst case scenarios for web site owners. Topics covered will include how to recover quickly after site failures, deal with server crashes, combat hacker exploitation, and move past other woes that can befall you if you don’t take proper precautions. Carolyn’s spotlight session is sure to provide attendees with a great set of skills that will keep them out of the danger zone should disaster strike.

435 Digital’s Senior Social Media Specialist Julie DiCaro is speaking at the YMCA’s IT Manager conference in Estes Park, Colorado. Her presentation “How to Use Social Media to Engage Your Constituents” is aimed at helping IT managers find the most effective methods of reaching out to their audiences.

Julie’s knowledge and experience with Social Media outlets and how to best use them is a great asset to the 435 Digital team. Julie is well known in the blogosphere for her managing of Aerys Sports the only online sports network run entirely by women writers.

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Currently, SEOs rely quite a bit on HTML elements that have been identified through trial and error(and the occasional Google admission) to communicate site features, keywords, and context to search engines. Many of these HTML elements that SEOs commonly use have been re-purposed to speak to search engines rather than human beings. This over-optimization of elements like H tags and title tags often stems from webmasters and SEOs lacking other, more direct avenues for communicating to the search bots.

RDFa appears to be a step in the direction of communicating with search robots directly via a set of attributes specifically for them, without needing to sacrifice any visual appeal or usability. My hope is that Google will expand their efforts to provide webmasters even more tools to communicate with search bots.

Here is a great infographic that delves into a more thorough explanation of RDFa and its practical uses for SEO.

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Part One of a Three Part Series on Comprehensive Web Development

We’ve been talking a lot at our 435 Digital Meetings about the overlap between various departments of our Digital Marketing team. One of the things that became apparent in these meetings is that it can be hard to describe under what circumstances your particular discipline, be it web development, SEO,PPC or Social Media, shines brightest.

Since I work as an SEO, my viewpoints are oriented accordingly.

As I’m also a nerd I feel that the most entertaining way to describe the interplay between SEO, Social Media, and PPC is via an uber-nerdy analogy.

I have also been re-reading the Hobbit and anxiously awaiting the November release of the Peter Jackson film adaption, so we will use a Tolkien-esque analogy to break down the interactions that should occur during the initial stages of website development.

Our story begins….

Let’s imagine that Bilbo Baggins, a stout hobbit fellow, is preparing for a long, arduous web marketing campaign.

In our campaign, Bilbo wishes to set up a website whose primary function is selling large quantities of Lembas, or Elvish Waybread.

In a perfect world, Bilbo would have access to a skilled web development team that is well prepared. to use search engine friendly practices when helping him design his site. Since this is a hypothetical, we will assume that the Shire has such a firm and Bilbo has a great relationship with them. Let’s call this company “Underhill Design and Development”.

Initial Web-Dev Meeting

Bilbo visits with the owner of Underhill Design, Mr. Underhill at the Prancing Pony in Bree to discuss Bilbo’s wants and needs. Through the course of the meeting it becomes clear that Mr. Underhill and Mr. Baggins get along splendidly and the two agree to work together.

Mr. Underhill suggests that Bilbo first carry out a consultation with local search engine expert Optimizus the White for SEO, at least for preliminary keyword research to help Bilbo decide which key phrases most represent his business. Mr. Underhill believes that this consultation will help Bilbo understand what his goals should be with the new site, and Bilbo recognizes that some honing of his focus would be very helpful indeed.

SEO Consultation Stage

Optimizus meets with Bilbo and the pair become fast friends. Optimizus educates Bilbo on the basics of SEO, and provides a brief summary of how a typical individual browses the web, and inevitably ends up at a site from a specific keyword search.

Bilbo grasps the concepts rather quickly and the two conjure up a list of words that Bilbo feels represent his business. They also divine the specific markets and demographics that Bilbo would be most successful targeting.  At the end of their efforts, numerous reports have been generated by various software and web apps, and the research is complete.

Armed with this new keyword research, Bilbo revisits Underhill Design to begin the process of creating the website.

SITE CREATION

At this stage there are some important exchanges that should have happened or are happening between Web Dev and SEO:

• The SEO team or consultant should provide the web development team with a solid list of terms to build the site around. In this hypothetical,Bilbo and Optimizus have done so.
• The SEO input provided will help influence the naming of files, the internal navigation elements, etc.
• SEO will also want to provide the Web Dev team with some advice on current best practices to make sure that they are up to date. Often different elements within the site code will become more or less valuable to search engines overnight, so a close relationship between SEO and web development is a major boon.
• Web Dev will take this time to make absorb the research data and incorporate it into a plan that will satisfy the goals and time constraints of the client.

Once the Underhill Design team has a great looking mock up, and have decided upon a logical search engine friendly framework, they will begin their site creation process.

The Underhill team works day and night.  The Web Dev staff stays up late consuming copious flagons of invigorating Entwash and Miruvor to fuel their efforts and aid their creativity.

When the toil is over, Underhill Design has crafted a website that portrays the beauty of a freshly prepared Lembas Wafer, while at the same time conveying to search engines that Lembas Cakes are the central focus of the site.

Important Interplay Between SEO and Web Development Teams

Tactics used by the web dev team here are geared towards making Bilbo’s life easier later on down the road when he needs to update site files and appearance, so the site has more than likely been created using a content management system like WordPress.

Specific Keys to Web Dev that is Conducive to SEO and Social Media Efforts:

• Files like images, banners, navigation buttons etc worded with keywords relating to what they are representative of rather than random numbers and letters. EXAMPLE Lembas-Banner.jpg rather than bnr102.jpg
• Links within the site between pages should be named in a logical fashion. Use  GoldenLembas.com/Other-Offerings/Cram.com rather than GoldenLembas.Com/9/21/1937.com. This allows for navigation that is more easily navigable for site viewers. It also allows Google Bot and other crawlers to scan the words used in the links to determine what the focus of the site is.

These changes will positively increase the amount of keyword density within a sites crawlable text. For Social Media Efforts, it is helpful to have site url’s to tweet, like, or post that are easily identifiable to readers.

Summary of Site Creation Process

Bilbo now has a website and should be able to attract some solid business through word of mouth, branded terms, and long tail searches. This being said, he can easily reach outside the borders of the Shire for new business should he focus some time and effort on marketing his site via Social Media representation, and PPC Advertising.

Alas this post is becoming long winded.

In order to show more of the interplay between the various disciplines of Web Marketing we will need to further delve into the mysteries of PPC and Social Media.

We will visit these topics and more in future posts.

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