Recommend a basic SEO guide

[purple]

I am looking to go back to basics after losing all confidence in what I know after the many Google algo changes.

Can anyone suggest some free websites / forums where I can get some basic guidelines.

I dont mind paying for advice, but with there being so many sites around I only want to pay for ones which I know will be of value to me.

Look forward to peoples suggestions ( I sure there was old threads on this)

[Brendon]

www.webmasterworld.com - lots of good stuff, and good people still there, but lots of n00bs too. Spend some time, learn the names, and develop your own mental filter to get the best value
www.threadwatch.org - better signal to noise ratio, high quality posts, but not much time for those not up to speed, there's an assumption of competence built in. If you get lost in the heavy threads, you're in the wrong place
forums.searchenginewatch.com - really good posting roster, lower volume than WMW, so easier to filter. Suffers from "tyrrany of the masses" to some extent still

If it's just a case of you needing to reassess how G is working these days, go do some basic research (read up on some white papers, do some comparative searches across G for different terms, across multiple SEs for the same terms, do research on the top 10, and look for the patterns)

I don't think that G have changed anything basic to the working of their algo, but I O think they have some much better filters out there at the moment. They have killed off a LOT of spammy sites recently, and if you have a good appreciation of how their linkage model works, you will see that the ripples can go a LONG way...

[Swiss]

I think the forums over at seochat.com are worth a visit. I try to have a browse on there at least once a day.

[Elaine]

the main problem is weeding out the good safe advice from all the 'probably's'
I quite like Seoguy.com - had some good basic advice from this forum.

Webmaster world is good - but takes some trawling through - especially as the search tool wasn't working last time I looked.

[Shane]

I've just got started with SEO again after a two year break of totally not giving a feck about it, it just seemed so pointless to spend days/weeks optimising a site only to get slapped like a bad monkey in the next algo change.

Well so far I'm hitting a few of top ten positions, a fair amount of top fives, a good amount of position 2's just behind merchants own urls (must mean aff competition isn't too fierce if the merchant ranks no 1 for their own url on their brand name eh ) and a some nice number ones.

It all seems to have gone too easy so far, every day I check the positions I expect to see them gone for good but it's been a few weeks now so things are looking fairly stable.

I did spend some time thinking how things should be organised etc first and about the way linking would be done etc.

PPC is all good and instant,if expensive, but this "free traffic" is fun too

ok till the next algo change that is

[Elaine]

"free traffic"

don't know about free - costs me a fortune in Hair colouring, wrinkle removal creams, sleeping tablets, diazapan etc.

[Frostie]

I have found many times that hitting top 10, top 5 etc is relatively easy, the problems and the hardwork comes in the following weeks months. I find it hard to actually stay in a high position as others add their sites and algos change to the point where you have to keep on top of things to make sure you continiue to be in the 1st page of results as time goes by.

As for advice, or places to get advice from, I have no suggestions but will be watching this thread carefully

Oh, and......
I dont need hair colouring - I have no hair :eek:
I dont use wrinkle cream - cement does the trick for me

[Shane]

"I dont use wrinkle cream - cement does the trick for me"

yeah I noticed that when I saw pics of you in the states in that wax museum.. people were coming up to bill gates asking who the bald dummy was of next to him !

on the SEO Front I've made a few rules to stick by that seem to be working ok.

Never link out of my site to anything except authority sites or merchants (no link exchanges on the site, I link to site A from site B and ask for a link to site C ..same PR )

Quality content that is keyword/phrase themed, ie.. make each page's content about something specific, with your targeted key phrases (more than one)

Add new pages daily, add new links into the site daily and steadily

the list goes on ... lol

SEO is such jigsaw, one person will say absolutely X works and someone else will have supporting evidence to say the opposite.

[gerry180]

http://www.seobook.com/

Found this one to be better than other ebooks.
Some useful resources included, recently updated 1 Aug 2005.

[smn2]

And I found Mike Grehan's ebook quite thorough...
Mike Grehan ebook

Steve

[Mogga]

There is also a newsgroup
alt.internet.search-engines
where you could find lots of useful info