Search Engine Marketing 101

[inexpensivedomains]

Originally Posted by Nacho

Hello inexpensivedomains, and welcome to SearchEngineWatch Forums. You will most likely recieve a Private Message (PM) from many of the members here about your request. However, one of the links on my original post points to www.seoconsultants.com wich has one of the largest lists of companies to help you. You may also go to SEMPO.org and find many resources to help you with your search engine marketing objectives.

Buena Suerte!

Nacho,

I appreciate the quick reply; the link you have provided was very informative, but what I'm looking for is not so much a comprehensive list of resources as much as a few industry-respected and well-regarded service providers for SEM that I can outsource and refer business to.

[Marcia]

If you scroll down the page here, there's a special forum set aside to post looking for help. There are people around with all levels of experience and price ranges - which could be a major consideration if you're reselling and marking up services. You might also want to browse the outsourcing forum, and hunt around for tips on what to look for and especially what to avoid.

I don't really believe there was a total OOP thing as such, but cutting back on certain select things seemed to help - and in one case I'm sure adjusting the anchor text percentage and adding content pages helped come back from Florida.

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by inexpensivedomains

I appreciate the quick reply; the link you have provided was very informative, but what I'm looking for is not so much a comprehensive list of resources as much as a few industry-respected and well-regarded service providers for SEM that I can outsource and refer business to.

Please understand that as a moderator to SEW, it would be unfair to promote a particular firm. Many large companies have different methods of finding the right SEM business for its needs. Some pick up the latest MarketingSherpa: Buyer's Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms others go to a Search Engines Strategies & Expo and listen to the speakers or find the right company within the EXPO. I've also know about companies searching for the right guy by reading the forums and picking out the most intelligent member to their criteria and others just type in a search engine a query that matches your service and "SEO" or whatever keywords you want. Companies often choose SEO/SEM firms by reading their articles, while others might just click on a link listed on some of the websites I list as resources. Here are a couple articles that might help you in the right direction:

Choosing A Search Engine Marketing Firm
SEM: In-House vs. Outsourced

I'm sure there are more ways and articles about this. Mine is just one more opinion as a search engine marketer.

[asebba]

Hi all!

I'm a student from Brazil and I'm graduating this year in advertising, making my final exam dissertation about Google.
I tried some times to make contact with a teacher from the Washington University to get some orientation, but I got no answers. I believe that he don't guide foreign students

I'm facing some problems because our bibliography for SE subjects is extremely poor, and I can't afford english books because it comes to Brazil REALLY expensive.

I got some Brazilian books to make the basic part of my dissertation, but the essential part, I will research in SE websites (like SEWatch).

I divided the dissertation in these subjects:

1 - Something about Internet and Information Serch Engines history. The importance of SE to the Internet Information Organization.
2 - Why choosing Internet to increase your business power?
3 - What are search engines and how they works (and worked)?
4 - Internet Advertising X SE Marketing
5 - Why Google?
6 - How Google engine works?
7 - How to optimize your website to increase your positioning results in Google search? Building your SE Marketing strategy.
8 - Case Studies.

Do you guys (SE Gurus) suggests me to include/remove/modify any subject?
Do you know any specific information sources for these (or other) subjects?

Thanks for your helping

[alexchapman]

"The Golden Rule of SEO: DON’T OVER OPTIMIZE, BE NATURAL."

I agree. Instead of concentrating on optimizing, you should be concentrating on providing great content to your users. As SE's get better and better your optimizing "tricks/techniques" will be filtered out. Making a clean site with great content will always get you the best results.

[MarqiShannon]

That was a great post for me personally. I am a designer that is looking to learn the ins and outs of search. I have a history being creative director and art director at design/ad firms, but now is the time to learn SEO/SEM so I can really do great things. If there is anyone that would like a young Padewan, I would love to network with a seasoned Search Jedi.

Thank you again for a great post to get me going.

Shannon

Originally Posted by inexpensivedomains

Nacho,

I appreciate the quick reply; the link you have provided was very informative, but what I'm looking for is not so much a comprehensive list of resources as much as a few industry-respected and well-regarded service providers for SEM that I can outsource and refer business to.

Nacho may not be able to recommend a well-regarded service provider, but I am one of his clients, and I can recommend him.

I have received many compliments from my colleagues about his professionalism and expertise. He has definitely set the wheels in motion here, giving me, the web manager, credibility when asking for content. In his presentation he was able to educate my colleagues as to their important role in this endeavor of content development that attracts various web spiders and therefore customers. He offered expert content, advise, delivery and professionalism in handling our skeptical group.

[Black_Knight]

Originally Posted by Nacho

Just in case, follow every single word of these important rules from the search engines:

Okay, I can sort of see why you'd suggest to take these guidelines as if they were rules when starting out and don't know enough to know under which conditions the guidelines not only can be broken, but would be better so.

Still hate to see the myth perpetuated though. Those are guidelines and clearly named so.

Maybe therefore Search Engine Marketing 102 is:
Know why the search engines made certain guidelines public, so that you'll more easily recognize the (possibly rare) situations where they should not apply.

Learn that many of the guidelines are more like: "If you have to ask if a thing is okay, then you don't know enough to mess with this stuff in an okay way yet."

[johnxtampa]

First of all, thanks to all the folks who share their knowledge here.

One question I have: I've noticed that some of the most popular articles, and most recommended threads, at times, have dates of 2002 and 2001 (for example, Danny Sullivan's "Intro to Search Engine Optimization", dated October 2002).

As good as they are, hasn't quite a bit changed since then? Not that I won't be doing my homework, but is it still safe to go by all those recommendations? And is there an addendum or list of what still really matters, and what's changed since then?

Thanks in advance,

john

[Brad]

When you read a SEO article with a 2002 or 2003 take it with a grain of salt but keep it in mind while you are reading around in the current forums.

Part of the challenge of learning about SEO is seperating old info from current, bad info from good, people that know what they are talking about and the clueless that just sound like they know and the two-bit hucksters. There is also a lot of speculation that goes on as the pros test theories - that does not mean to be bad info, but many novices take a speculative remark and run too far with it.

What works is to read lots of forum threads, ask well thought out questions when you cannot find an answer and move slowly until you start to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by johnxtampa

One question I have: I've noticed that some of the most popular articles, and most recommended threads, at times, have dates of 2002 and 2001 (for example, Danny Sullivan's "Intro to Search Engine Optimization", dated October 2002).

As good as they are, hasn't quite a bit changed since then? Not that I won't be doing my homework, but is it still safe to go by all those recommendations? And is there an addendum or list of what still really matters, and what's changed since then?

Hello John, and welcome to SearchEngineWatch Forums.

With SEM we also need to first learn how to crawl, then walk, then run and jump around . . . . till we can be doing triathlons, etc...

All of Danny Sullivan's and SearchEngineWatch recommendations are fundamental to learning the basics and all the way up the the very advanced. Back then and now they are considered almost as trade secrets, especially if someone reading is totally new to search engine marketing. Then you get good at it and with time (plus lots of experimenting) you can start breaking your own records.

If you can take away just one thing from this thread, I would like it to be: Don't take short cuts, get the fundamentals straight and never stop learning.

[dannysullivan]

Hi John--

I am set to do a needed round of updating to some pages in the coming weeks, but as said, those fundamentals have remained true. Good page titles, good on page on content, good links, those things still do work. Master them, then it makes sense to decide after that if you want to go on to other things.

[bluetooth]

Originally Posted by Nacho

For those of you who are new to the forums, welcome to SearchEngineWatch Forums. We’re glad to have you here with us

Learning Search Engine Marketing takes lots of commitment and a lot of time researching what’s new since our industry moves very rapidly. For those who want a fast jump start in our industry but don’t know where to go, I hope the posts of this thread will point you in the right direction.

What I will post are only my observations and recommendations as a person who has been near the Internet industry for over 10 years. Just remember a few things:

1) The Golden Rule of SEO: DON’T OVER OPTIMIZE, BE NATURAL.
2) Don’t SPAM or use techniques that the risks are high enough that you might loose it all one day – perhaps overnight.
3) Think what is best for your users first, the search engines will adapt.
4) Stay up to date, search engines change, users change, businesses can change for the better or worse if not up to date.

As my friend Brett Tabke once said to me, “read, read, read until your eyes hurt” and you will be able to design and execute a great SEM strategy to gaining traffic from the search engines.

First, start yourself with good basic knowledge, here are a few places to learn the basics. Rather than giving you a complete list of resources pages, except for Danny Sullivan’s Intro to Search Optimization article which is IMO the best because it takes you buy the hand step by step when you have no clue what this is all about, I recommend you to check SEOConsultant.com’s SEO Resources, Associations and Organizations page. Pay good attention to the submission tips and the PPC engines. This also includes Danny's Search Engine Report Articles Archive and SEOConsultants' Search Engine Optimzation and Search Engine Marketing Articles Archive.

Then, here are some recommended forums (listed in no particular order):

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
http://forums.seochat.com/
http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/
http://forums.spider-food.net/

Want to make it easy for you, just go to Barry Schwartz’(RustyBrick) Search Engine Roundtable and let him and associate editor Benjamin Pfeiffer (Phoenix) take you by the hand to the best posts of their forums watch list. Nick is also doing a good job with Threadwatch.org.

Then subscribe and read these websites:

http://searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.webpronews.com/
http://www.highrankings.com/articles.htm
http://www.spider-food.net/

Pay special attention to these guides:

Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 - Document Structure by the W3C.org
Adding a touch of style by Dave Raggett from the W3C.org
26 steps to 15k a Day by Brett Tabke
Search Engine Theme Pyramids by Search Engine World
SEO Checklist By André le Roux (except #8, explained why here)

Just in case, follow every single word of these important rules from the search engines:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html ( and related links on left nav)
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearc...basics-18.html
http://search.msn.com/webmasters/guidelines.aspx

Then, get a little more advanced by reading reading some outstanding search engine marketing books from our industry. I speacially recommend Aaron Wall’s SEO Book for lot’s of ground coverage in the SEO topics and Mike Grehan’s Search Engine Marketing: The essential best practice guide for a more in depth expert look at our industry and search engines. I know there are many other great books, I just seem to like these two as recommended reading for someone wanting to really get into SEO.

For Link Building, I recommend the following:

Link Building 101 - This really has it all.

When you get more advanced, you will need to stay up to date with research papers like these (but might be too advanced for you now, take your time):

Keyword Density Analysis Nonsense
Keywords Co-occurrence and Semantic Connectivity
On-Topic Analysis
Block-level Link Analysis

I also recommend you go to a Search Engine Strategies Conference at least once a year if you can afford it. Lots of contacts and great new info gets let loose every year. If you want to choose only one, I'd go with San Jose.

Please keep in mind that Search Engine Marketing is not only about SEO and PPC, be creative and go out and find something not every one is doing, for example:

Geographically Targeting with SEO
Marketing Tactics with Shopping Search Engines
How should I go about SEO for an eBay store?
Don’t forget expanding to other languages, opportunities are endless here: Multilingual Search Markets & Non-US Engines . . . and much much more, just don’t be afraid to let your creativity take wings.

One (almost) final link, I recommend you to read and subscribe to this thread “Threats and Opportunities of Search Engine Marketing” as it will get updated more in the future.

I’m sure there are many things missing on my post and anyone is welcome to add on to the list. More important, I sincerely request other more advanced or expert members of SEW Forums to help achieve the goals of this thread:

1) Helping those who don’t know where to start, but need simple direction before jumping to SEM 201 first.
2) Improving The Reputation Of The SEM Industry by pointing them in the right direction.

Buena Suerte!

Nacho

Thanks for the info. This will surely help us improve our web site.

Dear Nacho,

Just a note to say a huge thank you for posting so much info!

This is part of my new role and all this info is gonna be a huge help to me.

Many thanks once again & keep up the work for all us 'newcomers' to the concept of web marketing!

Cheers!

[RankManDude]

Building your PageRank can be a little tricky and
expensive. I build my PageRank purely using grace domains & seeking
software. There is a newsletter out for it that might help and I think
it comes with the software too.