Whenever I see a good discussion on SEO I tend to think its a good idea to share. In this case, we saw a very good dialog about SEO resources links on the “SeattleTech” email list which was initially kicked off by a post by Bill Bryant titled The End of SEO.
Tony Wright, developer of the web-based time management software called RescueTime responded with a great list of SEO resources from his personal SEO bookmark list:
Resources for SEO, Social Media Marketing, & Viral Marketing
If you want the PowerPoint deck, here it is. Please note: I wasn’t getting paid for this speaking engagement, so I didn’t go to great lengths to make a snazzy PowerPoint presentation.
Keyword Research Resources:
SEO Research Labs: (forgive the cheesy design) $99 and most of your work is done for you– a great option if SEO is not core to what you’re doing. You provide a description to what kind of site you have and a few core keywords. They provide a 6-sheet spreadsheet with information about up to 500 keywords, including estimated search volume, competitiveness of the keyword space, and more. Note that their data source is DogPile and MetaCrawler, which means that (depending on your market) the data might not be representative.Google Adwords (Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator Tool): Google Adwords provides some excellent tools to for adwords that also happen to be great (but not perfect) for SEO. The obvious benefit is that the data source is Google. The drawback is that the data is less-than-perfect for niche keywords. The keyword tool will give you a list of suggested/related keywords. Microsoft and Yahoo both have similar tools for their search ad offerings.
WordTracker: WordTracker is a suite of keyword research tools which also uses DogPile and MetaCrawler data. You can get an account for $8/day or opt for monthly/annual plans that are a little more cost-effective. Either way, it’s a good deal.
Google Trends: Google Trends (a labs/beta product) is a nice quick and dirty way to compare up to 5 keywords (here’s a comparison of shoes, footwear, and sneakers). Not ideal for heavy lifting, but it’s kind of fun and braindead easy. It also provides a stack ranked list of top regions/cities, which is interesting data for targeting purposes.
SEO Resources:
SEO Ranking Factors (SEOMoz) - This is the mac daddy of SEO resources. Rand & crew (fellow Seattleites!) have turned the SEO world on it’s ear by giving away reams of information about SEO that a few years back everyone was trying to sell via some cheezy ebook. Their ranking factors page is a list of categorized factors that matter in SEO. They asked a pile of SEO experts to rate these factors on importance and then present them to you stack-ranked in their category. If you read one page in this list, this should be it.WebmasterWorld - WebmasterWorld is a HUGE forum. The discussions around SEO are often useful, but the signal-to-noise ratio isn’t ideal and there is plenty of misinformation to be had here, so take it with a grain of salt. It’s a fabulous place to ask questions if you can’t otherwise find an answer.
Matt Cutts - Matt is the voice of SEO from Google. His blog is a wealth of information about SEO, but you should recognize that Google has an agenda (a relatively level SEO playing field), so he’ll be less forthcoming about tricks that might give you a competitive advantage.
SearchEngineWatch - A great resource. There is plenty of content that you have to pay for, but there’s lots of free content too. Be careful when searching for content here– this resource is old. SEO advice from 2002 is probably not as authoritative as a more current article.
Search Engine Spider Simulator - JavaScript/AJAX are lovely and all, but they can destroy your SEO if you’re not careful. Google has been promising to have their spiders actually render JavaScript, but for the time being you should understand how your site (and the links on it) display and perform with JavaScript is turned off (!). Check it out on Lynx or run your pages through a spider simulator like this one.
SMM Resources
Guide to Linkbaiting - A slightly irreverent guide to the art of linkbaiting.30 Social Media Venues - A list and description for 30 of the top social media venues. Each one is unique!
SocialPoster - A bookmarklet that lets you easily cross-post your content.
NoFollow Attribute (wikipedia) - A description of the nofollow attribute ( an HTML attribute that essentially removes SEO juice from a link). Nofollow was a response to SEO spam (comment spam in blogs being the prime example). You definitely want to have an understanding of this before you seriously engage in a concerted linkbuiding campaign.
Viral Marketing Resources
Viral Marketing is not a Marketing Strategy - Great blog post summing up my thoughts on trying to be overtly viral with a non-viral product.What’s your Viral Loop - Great post on the “engine of adoption” concept by the same author as the above article (Andrew Chen).
Guarav Oberoi followed with a great SEO link of his own. His email:
I am an SEO newbie too and often find myself referring to a highly useful post on SEOMoz that summarizes various basic SEO techniques into a cheat sheet format:
The Web Developers SEO Cheat Sheet.Thanks to Vanessa Fox - a respected Seattle-based SEO expert for her subsequent follow up email:
For keyword research, you can also check out this article on search engine land:
http://searchengineland.com/070709-082957.phpI previously linked to the SEO checklists we have on Jane and Robot in another thread, but mixed in with all of that are some SEO tools we recommend, including keyword research tools and diagnostic tools:
http://janeandrobot.com/admin/Pages/seo-developer-tools.htmlAs for the death of SEO, I mostly try to stay out of that conversation (although I think it’s ultimately going to just become standard best practices in webdev, marketing, and usability, rather than a siloed activity), but I did give in and do a blog post a while back on the supposed evils of SEO:
http://www.vanessafoxnude.com/2008/03/03/seo-is-the-worst-thing-ever-invented/Also Rajat Garg from http://www.pilotoutlook.com had some great links:
Try out SEOpen, SEO Quake (Firefox plugins) and SEODigger for getting lot of useful information on competitors.
