Welcome to part three of this three part series on SEO tools and resources. In the last two articles we discussed the variety of Firefox extensions used for SEO as well as an assortment of other free or affordable SEO tools. In this article we’ll discuss some of the resources you’ll want to access on a regular basis to keep up to date and informed on the goings-on in the search engine and SEO realm.

We’re doing to cover a few different types of resources below and I’m going to try to keep this article to a reasonable length so let’s begin …

Media

when there’s a breaking story or you want an expert opinion on a subject, a good first place to hit is the media sources in that industry. The SEO industry is no different and there are some amazing albeit often unconventional media sources. Some of my favorite are:

Webmaster Radio

Webmaster Radio is an Internet-based radio station with some great programing ranging from affiliate marketing to PPC to organic optimization and much more. With shows hosted by experts in their fields from Danny Sullivan (Search news) to Dave Szetela (PPC) you’ll solid information that is well-sounded. I’d list my favorite shows however what I like may be different than you and what I need to know may be different than what you need to know so look through their programming and either listen through your work day as I often do or download the podcasts for later listening.

WebProNews

WebProNews offers up-to-the-minute information on virtually every event. They have reporters writing constantly and have other scoring SEO blogs and other news sources, compiling the information in one place for easy access. They also have great articles by third-party writers and a very active readership that is proactive in their commenting. Definitely near the top of my go-to list when I’m looking for news and current feedback.

Addme

This site is difficult to classify as it fits into a couple categories but I decided to include under media as that’s my primary use. They include tools, resources, a directory and much more on their site. My primary use of this site is for the articles and newsletter.

Search Engine Watch

No list of SEO resources would be complete without including Search Engine Watch. This site is the one that started it all. Search Engine Watch provides everything from fantastic articles to breaking news to search engine stats and an awesome forum. A definite bookmark.

Blogs

As with many industries – blogs are a great way to keep informed on the latest goings-on in the SEO realm. The trick, however, is figuring out which blogs are worth reading and which authors are truly knowledgeable. Over the years I’ve read many blogs and to be honest – I still do. Below are some of the key blogs I reference on a regular basis.

SEO Book Blog

Aaron Wall over at SEO Book has an excellent blog worth reading on a regular basis. I have yet to visit his blog and not find some tid-bit of information that was worth reading either because of the information itself or because often he’s just entertaining. Another to add to your weekly reading list.

Matt Cutts Blog

It’s nice to get it from the horse’s mouth. For those who don’t know – Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s Webspam team. He blogs about Google, technology and occasionally his cat. One has to read what he writes knowing that he’s a Google employee and as such can’t really give away the farm BUT he gives tons of great advice, insight and tips. The perk being – this time you don’t have to ask if following his advice will get you banned.

SEO By The Sea

Bill Slawski (the author) focuses his attentions on the more technical side of things with tales of patents, algorithmic possibilities, statistics and functionalities. For many, his would be one of the more dry blogs if not for his gift with words and ability to make even the most bland of subject, palatable. You don’t need to visit his blog daily but adding it to your weekly journey through the web is recommended.

SEOmoz Blog

What blog list would be complete without the inclusion of the SEOmoz blog. Rand Fishkin and crew keep their visitors up-to-date of some great research, news and SEO tips. From opinion pieces to months-long whitepapers you’ll find useful information. Again – not necessary to visit every day but a weekly pass is always worthwhile.

Forums

Forums are a great place to gather information, especially on current events such as ranking updates. That said, reading forums can be a risky thing. Almost anyone can join a forum and post their thoughts. While this format allows us to capture a wide range of information and knowledge – it also results in less qualified people giving advice as well. So while I recommend reading forums – I also recommend taking things with a grain of salt – at least until you figure out who’s who.

SEO Chat Forums

The SEO chat forums are easily one of the largest and most popular of the SEO forums. They cover a HUGE array of issues from Google to social media to Alexa rankings to (hold your hats) Ask Jeeves (that’s right – the forum’s been around for THAT long). Users worth noting are rustybrick, fathom, and randfish.

DigitalPoint Forums

DigitalPoint also is an ancient forum (2000 – ancient by web standards at least). They cover a wide range of topics from SEO to PPC to affiliate programs. Some users worth noting there are shoemoney, daven, and of course digitalpoint. A great place to ask your questions. Heavily visited and they have a ranking system for their users so you can get a decent feel as to whether they’re reliable.

SitePoint Forums

There are a variety of reasons I like SitePoint and I own a number of their books. Their forums focus on design and development (not SEO) but every SEO needs resources on the design and development side.

Newsletters & Other Resources

Of course there are other resources that every SEO or webmaster needs to be able to get their hands on. Here they are:

Google Webmaster Guidelines

These are the guidelines set out by Google telling you what you can and can’t do and what tactics to look out for. Worth a look over periodically as the do change from time-to-time. If you’re heading into the forums for advice you’ll definitely want to gander at the guidelines first to make sure that if you get lead astray – at least you’ll know what can get you banned or penalized first.

Sphinn

A social media site for SEO. Here you’ll find user-submitted stories on a wide array of Internet Marketing topics. Obviously the quality and relevancy of the stories ranges from brilliant to utter crud but the cream usually rises to the top with good stories hitting page one. That said – an occasional peek at specific threads often reveals some hidden gems.

Search Engine Land Newsletter

Perhaps I should have included this in the media section above as it’s a fine site unto itself but it was the newsletter component that I find most helpful and so I have decided to place it here. Sign up for their newsletter and you’ll get daily notification as to when some of the major search engine events happen and some solid advice as to what it means for you.

High Rankings Newsletter

Jill over at High Rankings puts out a solid newsletter where she provides tips and advice including replies to visitor questions. While I may disagree with some of her points from time to time (the same can likely be said for more of the resources noted and I’m sure others can say the same about my writings and opinions) I’ve never seen her provide bad advice – my advice just might be different from time-to-time.

Conclusion

Obviously there are a ton more tools and resources available. In this series of articles I’ve tried to include those that apply to the broadest spectrum of people and that are the most helpful. I highly recommend hunting for your own – especially if you’ve got issues that you can’t find help for here.

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I’m going to let you in on a very dirty secret:

There is one question that is being dodged by experts in EVERY market. Answer that question and you’ll corner the market, be worshipped forever and get more customers and sales.

If it was that easy, why aren’t other experts answering these questions?

It’s because they fear an informed audience. That’s outright silly! But, we’re not going to tell them that. While your competitors run scared, you’ll be getting more sales since you’re going to follow the steps I outline in the article below. You will educate your targeted audiences, get more website traffic, teach people how to buy from you and increase your sales.

Now, are you ready?

Step 1: Find the questions that are being dodged by other experts in your industry.

I can’t tell you what these questions are. It will vary from industry to industry. . So, how do you find these golden questions to answer?

• Go to Yahoo Answers and type in your keyword. Examine the questions carefully and see which ones keep popping up. If people are asking the same questions, that means that people have the same questions. There’s a need that’s NOT being fulfilled.
• Go to forums and watch what your audience is discussing
• Survey your clients, customers and list of prospects

Step 2: Answer the questions in as many formats as possible

For each question create a blog post. Do NOT date these blog posts – you will see why later on. Once you create your blog post, expand it into an article. Then, turn your article into a video, special report, podcast and audio interview. You should also create online press releases.

Step 3: Answer the Questions in As Many Places As Possible

• You should submit your blog posts to as many RSS feeds as possible

• You should bookmark your blog posts using Digg, Technorati and De.li.cious

• You should submit your articles to the top websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions.

• You should submit your videos to YouTube and Viddler. You may even want to think about investing in the TrafficGeyser.com video submission service

• You should post links to your blog, articles and videos on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Linked In.

• You should post your articles on social marketing websites sites like Scribd and Squidoo

• You should submit your press releases through PR Web or Webwire. If you use Webwire.com, all you have to pay is $20. But, I do suggest comparing the two services and see which one matches your needs.

• Videos teaching people how to buy from you or how to use your product should be on your website.

• When people opt-in for your special reports, ebooks or other free offering, you should have an auto-responder series that gets people to go back to your blog or website. If you have lots of blog postings that answers your prospects’ top questions – all you have to do is create a summary for each blog posting and send people back to your blog every day. This way each blog posting will get the visibility it deserves. And, by not showing the date, these postings become evergreen.

Follow these steps and you will increase website traffic and get more sales, because you’ll be educating your prospects, answering their questions and teaching them how to buy from you.

You know how often I get asked about how effective social networking is for someone’s business, from my clients or when I’m out networking from random business owners?? Hundreds a month.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing how many of us are on the social sites but also how many are not!

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter whether you do business locally or globally, you should be doing some amount of social networking as ONE source of lead generation in your business.

Of course there are hundreds of other ways to get leads too and I’m only talking about ONE right now (and it’s not always the most effective depending on how you utilize your time but it’s certainly affordable).

Lead generation is ONE goal to have when you network online but it can also do the following for you:

- solidify long lasting relationships – either personal or professional

- provide an easy way to connect faster with target prospects, referral sources or mentors

- establish yourself as an expert in your field by answering discussion questions, posting tips and articles or even inviting ‘friends’ to live events like teleclasses and webinars

- drive more traffic back to your site for special promotions, downloads or interaction

- provides a central place to share photos, videos and basically get more publicity than you could ever pay (or pray) for

Is it worth it to spend my time on the forums or having profiles on these sites?

I say definitely yes.

- You want to ask and answer questions on forums and blogs

- Post comments, articles, events, information, tips, surveys and polls, anything to get the visitors attention

- Record and post interesting or business related videos (nothing too embarrassing!)

- Send people requests to join your ‘network’, ‘fan page’ or ‘group’

- Pursue those in related groups for interaction, advice, joint ventures, etc.

- Dig deeper into the websites of those you’re really interested in working with or those you want to pay attention to you and relate to them on a deeper level if you can – this is the way to make the most of your time I think.

- And so much more….

Whew! I know this can seem daunting and more sites pop up every day right?

I mean, you can even start YOUR OWN social network these days (not that you want to).

So, what should your ROI (Return on Investment) be you ask?

Well, granted this stuff sucks up a ton of time! So, if you’re delegating some of the initial connecting and basic weekly/daily posts and then you’re only in there mostly to dig deeper, get personal and maximize your time; then you can really build a great following. One that’s loyal and interested in new things you send out. A following that clicks and interacts with your profile, your videos and your website.

This is how then you get them on your list over time, get them to attend teleclasses or join your programs or even refer you!

I can tell you that the hardest part of figuring out whether your time/money invested in social networking is paying off though is that it’s not that easy to track results.

So, if you want to really find out if it’s working for you, you have to set up systems that allow for really detailed tracking – tracking your traffic, conversions, customers and more.

This post questions the notion about secret search engine optimization methods and SEO secrets. Are there SEO secrets or is SEO just a process of layering the fundamentals to produce the appropriate reactions?

If you came here to find a list with an illustrated “it’s as easy as 1-2-3 checklist”, then it is time to adjust your expectations and focus on more tangible guidelines to provide a foundation for producing real SEO results.

Anything worthwhile takes time, energy and effort. To create top ranking results in search engines is no different. There is no need to try and trick search engines, just give them what they want and allow the algorithms to work in your favor.

If your method is ethical, the last thing you need to fear is algorithms. Remember, they work for you if you provide the right signals.

What ARE the proper SEO Signals?

The secret to SEO (if there is such a thing) is based on a trinity of relevance…

1. Build as many relevant keywords to relevant pages as possible.

2. Build scalable site architecture and naming conventions (think Wikipedia).

3. Make sure that humans and search engine spiders know about it.

For example, if you have 1000 pages and each one ranks for 5 keywords, then you have 5000 relevant keywords driving traffic to your website; as a result of that will produce x amount of converting visitors.

Getting from 5000 to 50,000 keywords or respective visitors requires a scalable relevance model. And to create relevance you must identify your market and craft methods to appeal to attain traction tactfully and efficiently.

Growing anything takes time and naturally you must feed a site of that magnitude (to reach 50K visitors or more with something fresh, new and unique or exciting if you ever want to see them again (not just more of the same old new same wrapped in a new dress).

So, instead of thinking of the marketplace from the ground up, you can apply the top down model and emulate formulas for SEO that already exist.

Which type of strategy would you use? More pages to create more traffic (which requires more links and more time) or less pages and a higher concentration of theming you’re content to rank for a specific keyword? It really depends on your competition and ranking objectives.

Not everyone purchases or takes the optimal conversion objective the first time they visit your website. In fact, many will never return, so which do you focus on?; first time visitors, repeat visitors or both.

You have to have the simplicity and the clarity to communicate benefits to first time visitors, yet offer enough substance for those coming back for a second or third time to evaluate your offer. Providing substantial value is one method you can use to evolve the context and engagement levels of virtually any website.

Between forums, social media, search engines, press releases, targeted promotional platforms (like classified), affiliate’s, b2b marketing and websites like craigslist, e-bay, Google product search or other targeted niche sites, you should be able to tailor a specific offer to each type of prospect to create a frenzy and achieve suitable conversion over time.

The reality is, just because you haven’t tapped into it, that traffic exists and there are consumers frequenting competitors sites using the sames keywords you could acquire if you apply SEO. You just have to create something worth entertaining to incentivise visitors and then once they do, give them a reason to come back or pass it on to others.

So instead of thinking about short-cuts, automation or bending the rules. Just consider, there are no real SEO secrets, just temporal algorithms that are bound to change.

Search results do not just magically appear on their own, you have to plant the seeds and tend the results to harvest the reward of traffic, conversion and engagement, that is the real secret of SEO.