SEO 101
I believe very strongly in educating my clients so there’s no mystery about what I do. Here are some resources to help you understand the basics of internet marketing and usability.
SEO Books
- Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent. An easy-to-read primer on the basics of SEO.
- Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone. SEO in bite-size chunks for those of us with way too much to do. The companion website has lots of useful worksheets and templates you can use.
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. SEO is a lot more effective when you start with a well-designed website.
Keyword Research
- Wordtracker: Identify the keywords and phrases your visitors are using and how many competitors are using them, too. Free trial, plus a monthly or yearly subscription.
- Google AdWords Keyword Tool: Find keywords and determine the level of search volume, trends over time, pay-per-click competition and estimated cost per click.
Site Statistics
- Google Analytics: Powerful and free. Helps you figure out how visitors got to your website, which pages drive the most conversions and which pages simply drive people away.
- Crazy Egg: Much easier to work with than text logs. Shows you exactly where and how many people are clicking on your pages. Test different versions of your pages to see which version works best.
Page Analyzers
- SEOmoz Trifecta Tool: Discover how many sites and pages link to you, the number of times your brand is mentioned on the web and how much traffic your site receives.
- Web Page Analyzer: How fast do your pages load? Are excessive images and script slowing your site down? Get free analysis and advice here.
Firefox Extensions
- SEO for Firefox: Pulls useful data right into Google’s and Yahoo’s search results, including PageRank, Alexa rank, age of domain, WhoIs info, backlinks, delicious bookmarks and a lot more.
- SEO Toolbar: Displays tons of useful marketing data as you browse and provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper.
