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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There is a right way and a wrong way to use keywords in your submissions: Use them correctly, and you can help your site rank highly for your keyword terms. Use them incorrectly, and you could hurt your cause.

But don’t be afraid–You do not have to have to be a SEO guru to use keywords successfully in your articles.

Here are 10 essential tips for using keywords correctly in your article submissions:

#1 Variety is key–don’t use the same keyword all the time.

#2 Develop a list of 20 or more keyword phrases to work from.

#3 Don’t go overboard on the keywords–a good percentage to stick to is 3%, but keep in mind that individual publishers will have their own limits.

#4 You can use semantically related versions of your keywords–it does not have to be the exact keyword repeated over and over again. For example: race cars, racing cars, race car gear, how to race a car, etc.

#5 Update your keyword list regularly. Every few months conduct your keyword research again, and be sure that your keywords are still current.

#6 Long tail keywords are great as article topics.

Long tail keywords are 3-5 words long and are very specific, while your core keywords are 1-2 words long and are more general. Long tail keywords tend to be less competitive, so it can be easier to rank highly for them. Research your best long tail keywords and try to write articles around those very specific topics.

For example, if your long tail phrase is ‘long distance running shoes’, you could write an article about how to shop for long distance running shoes. Do this for all of your long tail keywords to create blanket coverage for all aspects of your niche.

#7 Use keywords in your title, when appropriate.

Your title needs to describe what your article is about, so you can only use your keywords in your title when the article is also about the keywords. For example, if your keywords were “chocolate recipes”, and your article was a review of various baking pans, it would not be appropriate to include those keywords in your title, because that’s not what the article is about. In order to include the keywords “chocolate recipes” in your title, your article would need to be about chocolate recipes.

#8 Your resource box is a prime spot for using your keywords, but you need to be careful. In an HTML resource box do not hyperlink the same keywords every time–switch things up!

#9 If you will simply write on the topic of your website, then your keywords will likely naturally pop up in the article.

#10 Don’t forget about your article summary (aka, the short description). Article summaries will often appear in search engine results, so that’s a great spot to use your keywords.

A keyword rich article does not have to sound awkward–if you use your keywords correctly, no one will be able to tell that you’re targeting certain keywords. They’ll just think that you’ve written a helpful article.

Using keywords in your articles is not hard, but you do have to be careful to focus on quality and readability, and exercise some restraint. If you follow these 10 tips, you will create keyword rich articles that are a pleasure to read and are easy to write.

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The 7 Basics That All Sites Need to Adhere To

Basic #1:

Have a great keyword-loaded URL [Get your domain and hosting at bluehost.com]. Create small uris with: Snipurl.com, Tinyurl.com, ICANN.org is the technical coordination body for the Internet (what to do about domain name disputes).

Basic #2:

Easy to use Site Is your site easy to use and navigate? Does it satisfy its intended purpose? Use techniques that are friendly to your customers and prospects. View compatibility with various browsers: AnyBrowser.com.  Check your graphics efficiency: Optiview.com ‘s Quickscan, keep track of your site’s performance: atwatch.com, dotcom-monitor.com, Keynote.com or lnternetSeer.com. Make sure your links work: SevenTwentyFour.com or validator.w3.org

Basic #3:

Give Away Value Give back to the community. Give something of value to your audience. Update this information periodically to keep your audience coming back. Examples include resources pages, books page, and white papers pages. [Or an ezine for example Matt's promotingtips.com].

Basic #4:

Satisfy Users Content Needs with External Resources Let your audience quickly find what they need. Valuable content, good navigation and easily accessible contact! feedback mechanisms. Add value to your site, by using some of the “free” tools on the Internet. For example, if you’re a U.S. public company, point to the Edgar database. If you want people to visit you, use [a mapping software] to give directions. If you can make maps.google.com to work for you, that would be great. Add a calendar supercalendar.com. In the language of your user such as Freetranslation.com.

Basic #5:

Put your URL Everywhere. All pieces of corporate literature should contain your URL: business cards, ads, letterhead, e-mail, company vehicles, packaging, promotional items, employees outgoing messages, signage around and within buildings, thank you cards, etc. GotLogos.com [or elance.com] to create a logo altterrain.com puts your url in a number of offline locations.

Basic #6:

Use a Signature Tag on your E-mail. A short description of your product or service should be automatically attached to the bottom of every e-mail. All employees should be encouraged to use it. Target your tag to the group receiving your e-mail.

Basic #7:

Submit Site at Search Engines, Directories, Announcement Spots, etc. Make sure people can find your site in Yahoo! and the top 7 search engines. Also try some of the vertical engines at searchenginewatch.com. Check out: Search.com for other places to submit to. Look at Yahoo’s list and Tucows.com list of search engine submission tools. Don’t forget to submit to DMOZ. Check your listings manually with MarketLeap.com tools (by keyword verification, search engine saturation, or link popularity). Learn everything you wanted to know about search engines from searchengines.net.

30 Techniques (Prioritized)

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) and other paid-for Internet Marketing
Pay-per-click is currently the hottest Internet Marketing technique and it’s only going to heat up from here. Although, Overture (now Yahoo!) started the trend, Google brought it to market. There are other locations to buy “from including Looksmart. Look toward Microsoft to create a service that is purported to leapfrog both Google and Yahoo! later this year. Create and manage the program yourself or use a firm.

2.Blogging
Search for Blogs at BlogSearchEngine or Technorati. You can blog yourself by sharing your thoughts on your site or you can blog on other sites. Create your own blogs with: Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, BlogHarbor, Blogger, Blogit, Weblogs, WordPress, and Userland. Check out: eLearnSpace.org’s Blogging Tutorial, Technorati’s Top Blogs,Radio Userland, or get your free Blog at JoeUser. Check out the small business blog center from allbusiness. Corporate examples (List of European Corporate Blogs, Ford, GM, Maytag Skybox, Jupiter Research), also some unofficial examples (Aston-Martin, Google, xBox, Dreamhost, and even John Kerry). Place ads on blogs with BlogAds, CripsAds or read the bloggers blog about it. RSS is a way to easily share your blog content with the world. Read about RSS at XML.

3. Establish a free online Newsletter Package content that is of value and distribute it on a periodic basis.
You can build trust and spread the word. Also a good way to gather e-mail addresses that you can market to. Announce everywhere you can.

4. Optimize Your Site Be Positioning in the Search Engines
If your potential customer types in the key word or key phrase that describes your services, you want to make sure that your site is within the first two pages that show up.

5. Podcasting
Podcasting is the fastest growing Internet marketing trend and will most likely jump into one of the top 3 positions in the next year. Read about podcasting at Wikipedia. Check out these directories: iPodder.org, Podcast.net, Podcastingnews, including the father of podding, itunes. Check out how various businesses are using podcasting (Deloitte, IBM On Demand Business, Fidelity, Project Management Podcast, Internet Business Mastery) Also check out some resources including: Yahoo!’s podding service, Podcasting-Tools, Podcasting, web20show.com, Career Builders Monkey Mail, Odeo, Byoaudio, Gcast

6. Find and Fuel Evangelists (Viral Marketing)
Whether it’s an internal employee or an excited partner, empower your evangelists with the tools they can use to help market you in the on-line world. Essentially, find the best way to get word of mouth excitement about your product or service. Alladvantage.com (no longer around), for example, grow to over 250,000 members in it’s first 21 days at 2,000,000 members in 120 days by getting evangelists to push their concept of paying users to surf the net. Create a tell-a-friend program with tell-afriend- wizard or build your own. Combining PPC and viral marketing, many younger entrepreneurs are making money with Google arbitrage. Flash course on making this happen.

7.Establish and Affiliate Program
Allow other sites to sell your products or distribute your value-added content. Lists containing affiliate programs: Adbility, refer-it.com, associateprograms.com, affiliateshowcase.com, sitecash.com, commission-junction.com, clickquick.com. linkshare, 2-tier, affiliatematch, SponsorDirectory. Reference Guide: associateprograms, 10 Do’s and Dont’s, and Information Outlet Running your own program: commissionjunction, linkshare.

8.Email Marketing
You should be collecting e-mail addresses at every opportunity. E-mail people with info they’ve asked for. Annuncio, Microsoft Small Business Center, Bluemartini, Constant Contact, HTML-Email-marketing, YesMAIL, & Vertical Response are interesting services that might be used. Potentially tie in with incentives from companies like: ECentives, ERewards. Build traffic with WebHitsDirect. You can also use MarketersChoice which bundles in e-mail marketing with their shopping cart service.

9. Use White Paper Sites for Lead Generation
Write and publish white papers and collect contact info (e.g. e-mail) from those that pick them up. Can host on your site or use a white paper lead generation site: Tradepub, Bitpipe, or KnowledgeStorm

10. Publish Articles, Books and/or get mentioned in News Stories
Use article distribution sites like Article Dashboard, Article Marketer, Article Sender,Phantom Writers, or Submit Your Article or article submission software like Artemis Pro. Write and publish a tradebook, eBook or Podbook with the book publisher Happy About or have them write and publish one for you. Easily publish eBooks with Fastebooks or use eBookBroadcast. Visit Dan Poynter’s Book Promotion Tips. Speak at conferences and learn more on speaking from speaker net news. Write and publish articles of value. Include your URL in your bio. Contact news people who write about your area of expertise. Check out: MediaMap, Bacons, LexisNexis or News Voyager, Biz Journals, Radio and Records Directory, Web Radio Directory, and the National Association of Broadcasters.

11. Run Webinars
Use tools like Centra, Interwise, Raindance, Polycom, PresentationPro, and Webex.

12. Online Press Releases
Write and distribute press releases pointing back to your site. Check out PRnewswire, BusinessWire, MarketWire, Internet Newsbureau, PRweb, 24-7PressRelease, PressReleaseWriting, PressReleaseNetworking, ExtraPR, GlobalPRMedia, Eworldwire, ProfNet.org/press.html, Pressbox.co.uk,
PrudentPressAgency, Pressreleasenetwork, Urlwire, Webwire, XpressPress. Press release writing tips at press-release-writing.com.

13. Participate in Social Business Networking
Have employees in your company participate in the various social business networks such as: Linkedln, OpenBC, Ecademy, Spoke, EveryonesConnected, Ryze, Tribe, Visible Path, Facebook.

14. Determine On-line Communities to Participate in
Use these services to find: user groups Google Groups (deja), mailing lists liszt, and discussion groups forumone of interest. Check out Intersync’s forum list and reference

15. Establish and Lead an On-line Forum / Community
If you can find the time, leading an on-line forum or running an on-line community is a great way to establish an aHinity group and build credibility. Try myfamily, Yahoo Groups for a host of on-line community services.

16. Put a Woo on your site
Wiki’s allows your site visitors to update the Web content themselves. The most extensive Wiki experiment is Wikipedia. This is certainly a technology worth experimenting with. Use tools from: WordPress, WikiWikiWeb, JotSpot, Social Text, or Confluence or look at Protopage

17. Establish a Reciprocal Web Linking Program
Approach appropriate sites in your industry and closely aligned industries to link to your site. Create a link2us page to make it easy. Check out ecnow.com/link2us.htm. Use Link-Builder, LinkLeads, InfoPack’s Alink, LinkAutomatic or SEOlinkExchange. Check your link popularity at Linkpopularity, LinkPopularityCheck, or MarketLeap. Join or start a Webring might work for your site.

18. Use E-mail Autoresponders
If you have key information that you want to share, consider using an autoresponder. This is a good way to gather e-mail addresses for future marketing. Can be used for: Promotional Material, Product/Service Information, Training/Hiring Help, Article/White Paper Distribution.

19. Conduct Surveys
Check out Yahoo’s or try Addaform, Survey, SuperSurvey, SurveyMonkey, Create Survey, or Zoomerang. Writeup your results and distribute them with the tools above in articles, books, blog postings and press releases!

20. Actively Monitor and Participate in On-line Community
Either manually or via on-line services, actively monitor and participate in user groups, mailing lists and discussion groups. Here are some services that can do this for you moreover, cyveillance, ewatch, and CyberAlet. Monitor TV news with NewslQ.

21. Run an Auction
Partner with a software company to run an auction at your site ebay, moai, Andale, amazon. Check out Tucows for Auction Tools.

22. Run Contests, Give-aways
Contests and give-aways are great ways to generate traffic. Just look at iWon. Check out these sites to help you advertise: Contestguide, Contestworld.

23. Give Away On-line Coupons
Here are coupon companies that could help: Coolsavings, Coupons, HotCoupons, RebatePlace, QuickToClick.

24. Participate in a Charitable Web Site
As an example, go to the Hunger Site at the UN, click a button and somewhere in the world a hungry person gets a meal to eat, at no cost to you TheHungerSite (paid by the sponsors). Cisco did a phenomenal tie-in with NetAid.org. Also try: igive, schoolpop.

25. Links in Internet Malls / Portals
Posting links in high-traffic malls / portals is a trend some are trying. Use your best judgment, some are great, some are a waste of money. Absolutely put a link in Yahoo (#7).

26. Participate in Paid-for and Free Banner Advertising
The best sites for paid-for banner advertising are those with traffic. Try any of the search engine companies that offer targeted dvertising. For free banner exchange programs, check out: 123banners, bannerswap or cyberlinkexchange. usww. Paid for service Microsoft Small Business Center, Doubleclick, iNet-Traffic.Have your banner created at Banner4u.net, Flicker.

27. Place Paid-for and Free Classified Ads
Place classified ads: Yahoo!, BestMall, Post automatically with the ClassifiedClub.

28. Host Classified Ads
Host classified ads at your site Excite Classifieds.

29. Apply for and Win Awards
If you have a site worth talking about, apply for, win, and post your awards. Check out: award-me.com

30. Create a free-for-all page
Sites to submit to free-for-all pages: FFAnet, Linkomatic, Submitad. Locations to download software for your own free-for-all page: Linkomatic. Services that will host free-for-all pages for you: FFA.net

Computer skills are very important in almost every work at home job. At minimum you have to use the computer to find your job in the first place and communicate with your employers. Usually, though, working on the computer is what you are going to be doing in order to complete your job.

Knowing some basic skills can get you by and learning some more advanced skills will make it that much easier for you to get a good work at home job. With good computer skills you will be seen as a great catch and someone that companies will want to hire.

Importance of Computer Skills

Computer skills are something that will allow you to succeed and compete in the work at home job market. Without computer skills you will be left in the dust.

You have to understand how to use a computer to even find a work at home job. Potential employers will expect you to know how to use a computer so that you can do the work they give you.

Computer skills are important because they are your key to working at home. They allow you to work remotely and be trusted to do the work right.

You do not have anyone around to answer your technical questions or help you figure out a computer program. If you do not know what you are doing then the work will just be given to someone else.

Basics to Master

Here are some computer basics that you have to master in order to work at home:

Email: You should know how to use an email account, including setting it up, replying and forwarding emails, uploading attachments and downloading attachments.

Internet: You need to know how to use search engines, basic terminology, how to navigate websites

Instant messaging: You should have an instant messenger client installed on your PC and know how to use it.

Programs: You need to know how to use word processing and spreadsheet software programs. You should have reach program on your computer. You need to know how to make changes to the default settings.

Advanced Skills that Help

When you know the basics you should be able to get the majority of work at home jobs and do just fine. Some jobs, though, may require advanced skills. Additionally, having advanced skills can give you a leg up on your competition and make you more appealing to employers. Here are some advanced skills you may want to learn:

- HTML coding: this is the language used to make up websites, most jobs will not require knowledge, but it is a useful skill to have
- Spreadsheet: this program makes presentations, it is rather easy to learn and great thing to be knowledgeable about
- FTP transfer: this is a way to transfer files form a main point on someone else’s computer, it requires special software, many employers use it to transfer files to employees
- Installing programs: This skill will help you out professionally and personally, it is something worth knowing and is actually quite simple to learn as most downloads are done via simple prompts you automatically get from your computer.

 Albert