Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as a profession is a real challenge. When pitching to a prospect SEO professionals do not only have to prove their worth, but also have to explain the benefit of investing in SEO.
We are repeatedly surprised by the number of organisations that not only ignore the value of SEO in the contemporary competitive Internet environment but are also completely indifferent to how their websites perform on Google and the other search engines.
To help educate the leaders in these organisations, SEO professionals need to be armed with knowledge and SEO resources not only to keep themselves informed of the latest challenges but also to successfully answer all questions and scepticism that business leaders might have.
If you’re ever in a conversation with a ‘non-believer’ in SEO or have just started out in the SEO profession, we have provided five of the most valuable SEO resources that can help new professionals learn the basics and keep up to date with all the new events in the SEO industry.
1. Moz SEO
Moz is an Inbound Marketing company that has built its own SEO software which tracks keyword rankings and website organic search performance. A great starting point for someone new to SEO is the Beginner’s Guide to SEO where you can read about every aspect of SEO. That will get you going. We’d suggest you also follow the Moz blog which will keep you updated with all the latest news from the SEO industry. If you can spare the time, the weekly vlog with Rand Fishkin called Whiteboard Friday talks about all matters related to SEO and is always an entertaining watch.
2. BrightEdge SEO
BrightEdge is an SEO software company. Its enterprise-grade software is constantly improving, with metrics you cannot find in any other platform such as the Share of Voice. BrightEdge has a really great blog which you can follow to get SEO updates, ideas for improving your website performance and answers to most SEO questions. You can read more about BrightEdge here.
3. Search Engine Land
A great resource to follow with knowledgeable SEO and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) professionals is Search Engine Land. It has a newsfeed and its own ’How to SEO’ guides which include both basic and advanced instructions and ideas for developing SEO strategies. The website is well-organised and you can rest assured that you will be up to date with the latest SEO news if you visit it regularly.
4. Quicksprout
This website has videos for beginners, intermediates and advanced users with instructions about SEO and everything related to SEM. This website provides the answers to many questions from advanced SEO professionals and it has proven very helpful in my own experience. It is a resource that you can use at any stage of your SEO career.
5. Screaming Frog
Enough websites and reading - let’s talk about a useful tool. Screaming Frog is free software that you can download to crawl a website and check the pulse of its SEO condition. For example, how many pages have meta tags and where they should have them, identify 404 errors, find 302 redirects and slow-loading pages, as well as 301 chains and loops. You can download the software on Windows, Mac or Ubuntu and the free version crawls up to 500 pages.
SEO Science
Of course, you can always find additional tools and resources to the ones we’ve picked out, but these SEO resources can play a key role in the early development of an SEO professional. You will always be too busy with your day job to take all the information in at once, but every new piece of information you read will always take you deeper into the discipline of SEO to learn more. SEO is a complex science as you cannot only devote your attention to learning Google’s Ranking Algorithm – to understand SEO you need to get your hands dirty with Google Analytics, HTML code and web development, Google Trends, industry news, the importance of blogging and other content creation, social media…. I could go on.
If you know of any good SEO resources then please do share them with us, we’re always happy to read new information. Just leave a link in the comment section below.
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