Starting Over, Part 3 - Optimize
Once your site is launched and indexed, it's time to sand off the rough SEO edges. Part 3 in the "Starting Over" covers how to do a quick, early SEO audit.
SEO Basics
If you're on this page, you probably want to learn the basics of modern SEO, right? Never fear! Here at Moz, we practically invented basic SEO, and we'll keep you up to date on the latest standards.
If you haven't already, you probably want to read the newly updated Beginner's Guide to SEO. It explains key concepts like how search engines work, keyword research, and the importance of links.
Here, we've listed some of our favorite posts on SEO basics, and you'll find the most recent blog posts below.
SEO 101: The Beginner's Guide to SEO : Start here to understand the basics of modern SEO.
SEO Learning Center : Moz's free SEO learning resources are continually updated, and a virtual encyclopedia of SEO tips and tactics.
The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 3.0 : If you're looking for basic technical SEO considerations, this 4 page downloadable cheat sheet will get you started on the basics of meta tags and more.
How to Rank : The SEO Checklist: Ranking in Google really isn't as hard as some folks make it seem. In this video, our SEO guru Rand Fishkin gives you a simple checklist for greater visibility.
Keyword Research : The Beginner's Guide to SEO: SEO almost always starts with keywords, so we thought this would be a good place for you to start too.
Most Recent Articles on SEO Basics
Starting Over, Part 2: Launch
After months of building and planning, it's understandable to want to finally pull the trigger, but launch is important and rushing it can delay real success. This is the story of how I got Minimal Talent off the ground.
Inbound Marketing and SEO for Bands and Musicians
What I find really interesting though is that some niches act as if they are immune to the constant pressures of the modern day marketer. In my experience, one of the biggest offenders is the music industry - specifically independent artists. I've been working in SEO and inbound marketing for about four years now and since I've always had a passion for music, I wanted to take some time to discuss some simple, highly actionable steps that musicians can take to start marketing their band like a boss.
J
Kick-starting Your SEO Efforts When You're Just Not Feelin' It
It's times like these that you truly need something to kick-start your day and keep it from becoming another one of those lost weekdays where you get home and wonder what you accomplished. (Hint: probably nothing.) Here is a list of a few easy things to look at SEO-wise that might just ignite a little passion, creativity, or drive to your day:
Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
Moz Academy Training
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Keyword Research Master Guide
Learn Keyword Research like the pros
Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
9 Experts and a Summary: What Makes an Ideal SEO Employee?
What do the best and brightest SEOs in the US and the UK look for when they are hiring? Read on to find out. Take note: Their answers may surprise you.
A Simple Error that Tanked My Site and Stopped My Heart
Earlier this year a number of our sites tanked and when I say tanked I mean THEY TANKED. Not only did visits dry up, as a result of their rankings evaporating, but all toolbar PageRank disappeared reverting to n/a. I'm talking a site with a homepage toolbar PR 7 showing PR n/a! It was a very strange experience, made all the more strange by the fact that sites that ranked on pure age (been there since god was a boy with decent content) tanked alongside sites we'd worked on.
How to Learn SEO
At Distilled, we define our purpose as "discovering, implementing and sharing the ways great companies succeed online". It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that (a) I think a lot about how to learn SEO effectively and (b) we try to build learning into pretty much everything we do. "How should I learn more about X?"...
Listening to the Web with Google Reader: A Beginner's Guide
This post is about building a listening machine for the web. We’re fans of the cheap (or free) DIY approach. If you have hundreds or thousands of dollars a month, tools like Radian6 are great. For the rest of us, we can create a pretty powerful listening tool with the following....
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Project Management for SEO (2012 Edition!)
How not to suck at project management and take your work, business, and team to the next level.
J
Free SEO Advice & Marketing Tips for the Music Industry
Music is one of the most popular forms of entertainment and one of the most traded digital assets on the planet. Ever since Napster's debut in 1999 musicians, record labels and the RIAA have all singled out file sharing as the overwhelming source for loss of revenue in record sales. I have always wondered why they get to point all of these crazy fingers without highlighting how absolutely awful they are at marketing their products on the Internet – not to mention how little they seem to care about the revenue they lose to their own horribleness.
An Open Letter to New SEOs
You're entering the field of SEO at an amazing time, where there seem to be more jobs than people. So, why aren't you getting hired? I offer you some fatherly advice.
What Super Bowl Commercials Can Teach Us About SEO
Now, I know what you're thinking: "Steve just wrote this post so he could watch old Super Bowl commercials." And you're not wrong ;-) I'll jump at any chance to watch (and share) YouTube videos. Fortunately, in the process of sifting through my favorite ads from years past, I was able to select a few videos that can actually teach us valuable SEO lessons. So sit back, and enjoy these all-time great Super Bowl commercials, while I drop a few SEO nuggets of knowledge along the way.
SEO Pricing: 600+ Agencies Share Costs of Services & Pricing Models
Near the end of December 2011, we ran a survey on this blog asking consultants and agencies of all sizes and geographies to contribute their pricing models and cost structures. I'm pleased to share the results of that survey in the hopes that it will give everyone in the search industry a better idea of the range of fees and the services provided. Obviously, this data is imperfec...
Proving Trust on the Web
For those of us who've been deep in the trenches of online marketing for years, the question of who to trust may seem inane. We've all gravitated to sources of one variety or another, and probably built up a few favorites based on past experience. I've shared some of my selected sources in the ...