Best SEM/SEO Instructional Materials/Resources

[sub8hr]

There have been a number of threads on this, but they always seem to turn in to "we get traffic by buying a lot of keywords" or "SEO to get natural search results is the way to go." This is all well and good, but not helpful as a comprehensive battle plan.

So my questions to the community are:

1. What is your favorite instructional SEM/SEO DVD or book?

I've looked at a couple books now, but they mainly go through the mechanics of how to set up an adwords account and plug in keywords or simply emphasize plugging keywords in to your site. Sure, the name of the game is keywords. But how do you pick the best ones. Once you have some good ones, how do you structure them into an effective campaign. How do you get from these keywords to the variations and long-tail terms that build your program into hundreds of words.

What I'm looking for here is a systematic, comprehensive approach to tweaking out your site with SEO and for building a successful SEM campaign.

2. What is your favorite company or person that can help you with SEM/SEO?

Also, I'm wondering here, what kind of range of service exists out there. Do companies generally fall into those helping large vs small companies? Are there particular things to look out for in a good SEM/SEO person. Why do you like the company/person you do and what results have you gotten from their battle plan.

[FrozenCanuck]

Stompernet - Stomping the Search Engines 2.0 ... it's free if you pay for shipping.

Google STSE2 and you'll find it. I got it ... very worth the $19 to ship to Canada.

Learned a TON on this program.

[specmurt]

STSE2 is not available anymore.

Good free SEO course is 30DC (www.thirtydaychallenge.com (http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com)). You get what you paid for though. Sometimes it gets confusing and it's built around $150 tool called Market Samurai (you use trial version for 30 days). The tool is OK but it violates Google terms of service (you are not allowed to programmatically query Google), so you can get temporarily banned from accessing Google.

If you are ready to pay around $400, I'd go for Traffic Secrets 2.0 (www.trafficsecrets.com (http://www.trafficsecrets.com)). Essentially the same material as in 30DC but presented really well. I mean, really, really well. Plus workbooks, plus online community, etc, etc.

[JKohlbach]

One of the best sites with "free" resources i've found is www.seomoz.org (http://www.seomoz.org) (I'm not affiliated, but I do use their service.). They offer a range of free tools which are good to start with, then you can upgrade for around $100 i think. They also have a pretty good blog, it'd be worth reading some of the back posts on topics that interest you. Sometimes it's a bit too much information, but you just gotta pick out the bits you're into..

[tbone2345]

<shameless self promotion>

I'm involved in seo consulting and the seo space. I've run an ecom company in the past and im still amazed how much untapped potential there is online, particularly in the small business arena.

I decided the other day to cook up a new muse...essentially a DIY step by step SEO guide for people running SMBs or people starting up....judging by the posts around the forum there'd definitely be a market for it. Sites like seomoz and seobook are great but they still don't give you a "here's the steps, do this, do that" style guide for beginners (well cheaply anyway)

The guide will be based around 40/50 page seo analysis and strategy guides and I write for bigger smbs....thinking about either giving it away or selling for 5-10$....I'll post more once I make a bit more progress.


</shameless self promotion>

[webgal]

Do watch the shameless self promotion. Thanks.

[sub8hr]

I checked out some of the free vids Stompernet has on their site, quite good. Really opened my eyes to the power of SEO and getting prominent natural search listings for the right keywords. Also made me realize my site needs a complete overhaul because the current copy will never rank for any of the keywords that it needs to. Heck, I even need to do a more thorough job of figuring out what the right keywords are even. So the research continues, in an ever more informed direction.

There still don't seem to by any good recommendations for SEO/SEM companies. Anyone know a good one that specializes in helping small businesses get up and going? That is, in the do it for you sense. I think I'm good on "how to" resources from previous posts. Please don't post back saying that SEO is your next latest, greatest muse. I applaud your efforts, but I'm looking for well established companies with verifiable track records that I can read about.

[specmurt]

I checked out some of the free vids Stompernet has on their site, quite good. Really opened my eyes to the power of SEO and getting prominent natural search listings for the right keywords. Also made me realize my site needs a complete overhaul because the current copy will never rank for any of the keywords that it needs to. Heck, I even need to do a more thorough job of figuring out what the right keywords are even. So the research continues, in an ever more informed direction.

There still don't seem to by any good recommendations for SEO/SEM companies. Anyone know a good one that specializes in helping small businesses get up and going? That is, in the do it for you sense. I think I'm good on "how to" resources from previous posts. Please don't post back saying that SEO is your next latest, greatest muse. I applaud your efforts, but I'm looking for well established companies with verifiable track records that I can read about.

Why do people so obsessed with SEO? SEO contradicts with a low information diet. It requires a lot of maintenance and, although you can outsource it all, it is better to just buy AdWords traffic.

I read a post on WarriorForum the other day from one guy who submitted 200 articles per month to earn $800. That's crazy. Write six articles per day to get just $800 in affiliate comission. Outsourcing is not viable, you pay $1000 for articles with $5 per article. Calculate how much traffic you can get with $1000 using AdWords.

With AdWords you pay money and get traffic immideately. With outsources SEO you pay money and, maybe, just maybe, get traffic over course of several months if you are lucky to get on the first page for some keyphrase. And it is not guarandeed you stay there.

[sub8hr]

Low information diet doesn't mean cursorily inspect something once and never look at it again ever.

Anything takes maintenance. SEO is mostly a front-loaded process of setting up your site correctly and building a critical mass of links. Once you land on the front page of Google you're generally not going to drop off the face of the planet over night.

I would also posit that guy was not doing 80/20 SEO. That sounds a bit more like 1/99. A single example of a random post on a forum of a guy doing something horribly incorrectly is hardly a significant sample size.

Adwords alone also misses the lion's share of the traffic. The #1 search results for a given keyword allegedly take 25% of the clicks. If you're getting a 1% CTR off of your adwords ad you're getting... 1%, assuming you even show up on the page every time. So good SEO can get 25x the results.

Beyond just getting good search results, it's becoming clear to me that good SEO also encompasses fundamental aspects of sizing up your target market and competition--which is a no-brainer if you are at all serious about running a business.

[tbone2345]

Why do people so obsessed with SEO? SEO contradicts with a low information diet. It requires a lot of maintenance and, although you can outsource it all, it is better to just buy AdWords traffic.


On the contrary, if you have a niche market with few or no competitors, a bit of time spent doing SEO can pay huge dividends.

Something as simple as a well written and targetted listing in Google Local Business Centre can double or triple website click through and conversion for 15-30mins worth of work.

SEO isn't just pure link building, there are a lot of quick and simple tweaks you can do to generate traffic and with few competitors in your market you can get away with very little maintenance in some cases too.

[JeffWilliamson]

I read a bunch of SEO stuff on the internet (some good and some bad) but for the most part trial and error is what worked best to see what works and what doesn't.

Ive just been split testing things one at a time and moving forward. Since Ive been doing this I've done pretty well, and signs are pointing to improving. I know "Trial and Error" probably isnt the answer you were looking for in this thread but it's definitely the way to go rather than trying to follow anyone's "magic bullet" programs.

Finding someone who knows a lot about SEO is very helpful, especially if you can pick their brain on previous experience. Im sure if we all put our heads together we could probably pool a bunch of experiences and come up with some good steps to take, especially for folks just starting out.

I'm no expert for sure but I would be happy to answer questions on my experiences so far, just PM me or something.