Whether you’ve just learned what search engine optimization means or you smirk at the “googleprayer” tag, you know that SEO is one career that offers the ultimate in on-the-job training. So where do you turn for the textbooks? Keep reading for a guided tour.
As always, I have to start out by saying that I don’t do search engine optimization for a living. That said, I’ve been writing about it for more than three years now, and my resources have kept me on the ball as far as what’s been happening in the field. If you get a sinking feeling when you put “seo guides” into Google and see more than two million hits, take heart. You’ll still want to go through the list I’m going to give you to decide which ones will work for you. I’ve used all of them to further my own SEO education.
When you find the ones you like, you will want to consider setting up a feed to have new posts mailed to your inbox. Practically every web site is doing some kind of RSS feed these days. I don’t have everything on a feed, because I don’t want that kind of flood in my inbox. But I find myself relying more on the resources I receive in my email than I do on the ones I have bookmarked, simply because it’s more convenient.
Along those lines, Media Post Publications (http://publications.mediapost.com/) is the first resource I’d like to mention. You can register for free to receive a number of their newsletters. The ones I receive each focus on a different aspect of marketing and search. They include larger news, such as the reasons behind the latest battle between Google and Microsoft. They also include smaller, more practical items, such as the changes you can make to your web site to convince more people to convert.
For the latter, I recommend the company’s “Around the Net in Search Marketing” newsletter. It summarizes several blogs that can be found, well, around the net, and includes links back to those blogs, so you can read the full story yourself. A recent issue included blog posts about improving your “About Us” page (which I will definitely be reading with interest!), whether reciprocal links are now held in as much disdain as paid links, a humorous look at canceling an AdWords account, and two other items. I admit, they had the good taste to include a recent piece by yours truly covering click fraud, but I was reading this newsletter well before that happened.
Search Optimization 
