I am asked every so often to put together a few thoughts, books, and links on SEO. Usually these go into an email or ppt deck used to kick off what always turns into a larger discussion about traffic acquisition as a whole. SEO is not the magic pill but it does force you to ask hard questions about your company and product.
Question #1 - Did I hire an engineer to build my web site? Someone who really understands best practices from information architecture or did I find the backyard mechanic … “yeah, it works but that thing won’t pass inspection!”
Question #2 - Does my marketing department keep current with what Google is doing?
Quesion #3 - Did my designers, content producers, and product team build something that is easy to use, informative, and worth sharing? If no one links to your site, if no one talks about you on Twitter or Facebook - chances are you have an elevated perception of your own site.
And without further interruption here are a few links -
Good house keeping:
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
- Search Engine Visibility (old, but a good primer on SEO and I’ve used it for teaching a few times)
Keeping current (alg changes, penalties, patents):
Ted Ulle is a moderator on WebMasterWorld. Has coined many Google penalties, outside of some of the folks at Mountain View there is no one who knows more. His areas of expertise include information architecture, usability, and SEO.
Link acquisition:
Very little published on the subject directly. Marketing, promotion, and social media books are great once other fundamental SEO skills are understood.
Analytics: Web Analytics 2.0: The art of online accountability and science of customer centricity
People: Develop a group of people that you can bounce ideas off, there is a lot of SEO myth out there and when learning folks often confuse coloration with causation.
Great People Decisions: Why They Matter So Much, Why They are So Hard, and How You Can Master Them.
Key concepts:
- Do keyword research, when you think you know your vertical thoroughly - start over!
- You as a webmaster are not Google’s customer
- Google’s intent is to organize the world’s data, not bring you traffic
- SEO = solid information architecture + quality content + diverse content types + link acquisition strategy
- Be objective, ask yourself questions such as:
- If I were a Google Engineer would I consider this spam? If my competitor were doing this and I had Matt Cutts phone number, would I call him and say they were cheating?
- Does the page I just built look like an authoritative page for the keywords I am targeting?
- What elements would I want to see for a page claiming to be the authority on %Keyword%? Would it have pictures, expert info, video? Would it be easy to use and the kind of thing I immediately want to share with other people?
