If you’re a newbie or someone who wants to learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO) then searching through a plethora of options on the Web is a task by itself. SEO is changing daily and you probably don’t know where to start, what to follow, and what to ignore, right?
I started writing this blog post as a link building resource blog post and then decided to cover (almost) all the aspects of SEO linking to some of the best resources available. If I have missed any interesting resource or an aspect of SEO then feel free to comment below and I’ll add it to the list.
I have made sure that only the best articles remain in this list that are comprehensive and simple to understand. I’ll focus on the following aspects of Search Engine Optimization:
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Keyword Research
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Competitive Analysis
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Content Creation
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Website Architecture
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On-Page SEO
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Link Building (Off-Page SEO)
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Social Media
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Web Analytics
What You Need To Know Before You Start
Before you start you have to make sure that you understand some basics of Search Engine Optimization like the popular SEO terms, SEO guidelines, etc. The following resources will help you to kick-start your SEO campaign from nowhere.
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40 Essential SEO Terms Marketers Should Know [Glossary] — A HubSpot blog article that highlights the most important Search Engine Optimization (SEO) terms that every marketer should know.
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12 Rules For Choosing The Right Domain Name — If you haven’t started a website yet then these 12 tips will help you to select a good domain name.
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Google Webmaster & SEO Guidelines: Everything You Need To Know — Google recommends the best practices and guidelines to webmasters in their support center and have also crafted an SEO Starter Guide. This blog post highlights Google’s Webmaster and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidelines that you should know.
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How To Do Keyword Research Using Google AdWords Keyword Tool — Keyword research is one of the most important step in any SEO campaign and this post shows how to do keyword research using Google AdWords Keyword Tool.
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Why You Should Target Long Tail Keywords For SEO — If you’re not new to SEO then you probably know the importance of long tail keywords. This link tells you why you should target Long Tail Keywords instead of those competitive Short Tail Keywords.
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What Is “High Quality Content” According To Google? — Everybody says write high quality content as it ranks well on Google or other search engines. But how do you define “high-quality“? Writing a lengthy article doesn’t make it high quality as there are several other factors that you need to consider. This post shows you how to create great content that performs well in search engines.
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How To Create Great Content That Performs Well In Search Engines — The key to building a quality website that performs well in search is to focus your website and content on users, not search engines. This is your guide on how to create great content that creates its mark in search engines.
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How To Produce High Quality Written Content — This post tells you how to produce high quality content by showing some of the best practices.
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Top 30 Free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools — Lists the most popular Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools for On-Page & Off-Page SEO Analysis, Keyword Density, Competitor Analysis, Research, and more.
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10 Free SEO Tools For Competitor Analysis — Audit your website with 10 SEO Tools for Competitive Analysis. Generate your SEO report and outrank your competitors!
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24 SEO Browser Extensions — As the title suggests, this one has listed a great set of SEO browser extensions for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
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Google Panda: Finding More High-quality Sites In Search — Official announcement for Panda update by Google.
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Google Penguin: Another Step To Reward High-quality Sites — Official announcement for Penguin update by Google.
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Google Algorithm Change History — Each year, Google changes its algorithm up to 500 times (if not more). This write-up outlines all the Google Algorithm Changes.
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Google Updates For Non-SEOs — If you still have no clue about what Google Panda or Penguin update is then this post explains it in simple English.
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How To Survive Google Penguin With Effective Content Writing — This link shows you how to survive the next Google Penguin update or whatever future update that’s coming by following few content writing strategies.
On-Page SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is basically classified as On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. On Page SEO refers to almost everything we do to our website to make it more search engine and user friendly.
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What Are On-Page SEO Factors? — On-Page SEO factors are the aspects of a given web page that influence search engine ranking. Learn some of the best on-page SEO practices that you should follow for that ‘perfectly’ optimized web page from the link above.
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On-Page SEO Factors: Which Ones Have The Most Impact On Rankings? — This post introduces more on-page SEO factors that can be leveraged to get maximum results.
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What Is A Title Tag? — Every web page needs a title tag <TITLE> that describes its content. This write-up gives insights on title tags and its importance.
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15 Title Tag Optimization Guidelines For Usability And SEO — This one shows some guidelines that you can use to create the ultimate title tag.
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Nine Best Practices For Optimized < Title > Tags — Just like the title, the link shows some of the best practices for an optimized title tag.
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What Is A Meta Description Tag? — Meta description tags doesn’t impact search engine rankings but they have direct impact on click-throughs on search engine result pages (SERPs). This post give more details about meta description tag and some best practices to follow.
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Think Less About SEO & More About Click-Throughs — This is a must read to know how search engines use meta description tags and how to improve search engine result click-throughs by writing an effective meta tag.
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The Ultimate Guide For Web Images And SEO — This is the ultimate guide to search engine friendly images.
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20 Sites To Get Free Stock Photos & Images For Commercial Use — This post lists 20 sites to get free stock photos and images to use on your website.
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Internal Links: What Is An Internal Link? — Internal links are links to your own inner pages. This guide gives more insights and some of the best practices to follow while interlinking your pages.
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Everything You Need To Know About Web Structure & Internal Links — This article shows you how to structure your website as our goal should be to create a website with a clear hierarchy and text links.
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9 Pro Tips For Developing A Killer Internal Link Structure — Here are nine internal linking tactics to get you started.
Off-Page SEO (Link Building)
Off Page SEO is all about link building and everything else that takes place outside your website so as to improve the ranking of your website.
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Link Building A-Z Guide – Definitions & Terms — This link building guide defines the most common link building terms, from A to Z.
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What Is Link Building? Strategies & Examples — This post explains the basics of link building with some link building strategies.
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50+ Things Every Link Builder Needs To Know — This one highlights what every link builder should know.
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Six Things You Have Got To Know Before You Build Links — It reminds you of 6 things that you should know before starting your link building campaigns.
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SEO Copywriting Tips For Improved Link Building — This is your mentor to learn using your copywriting skills for link building.
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59 Lists You Really Must Have To Build Links — You must create and keep these 59 lists for an effective link building campaign.
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Link Building Strategies – The Complete List — This post has the most comprehensive list of link building strategies.
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The Noob Guide To Link Building — It’s a 6 month link building plan for your website.
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Link Building Strategies And Tips – Post Panda & Penguin — This post shows what link building strategies works and what doesn’t post Penguin update.
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131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies — This lists 131 legitimate link building ideas that you can use in your link building campaign to get more links.
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15 Best Link Building Tools — This page lists 15 link building tools that makes the whole link building process easier.
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Link Building Tools We Use At Distilled — It lists all the link building tools used at Distilled (online marketing company).
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16 Chrome Extensions For Link Builders — Browser extensions can increase your productivity to a great extent. These 16 Google Chrome extensions makes life easier for link builders.
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7 Reasons Content Marketing Is Better Than Link Building — Content marketing and link building are both important but this post gives 7 reasons why content marketing is better than link building.
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Don’t Forget The “Marketing” In Content Marketing — It explains the importance of content marketing and shows you how to promote your content.
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List Of Infographic Sites For Link Building — Created an interesting infographic? If so, then this page has a huge list of infographic sites that you can use for building links.
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The 10 Golden Rules To Attracting Authority Links — Here are 10 golden rules by Neil Patel to attract authority links to your website.
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The Ultimate Guide To Advanced Guest Blogging — Guest blogging is still considered as an effective way of link building and this is probably the best guide to guest blogging.
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The Easiest Method To Link Baiting — Link baiting is one white hat way to attract tons of links in no time as it can be viral in nature. This post shows the easiest way to bait links.
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Link Building Through Blogger Outreach — Shows how to build links by approaching other bloggers.
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22 Tips For A Better Outreach Response — Gives 22 simple tips to ensure that you get quick responses from everyone you contact.
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Beginner’s Guide To Link Prospecting Using Google Search — It shows you how to use Google search for quickly finding link prospects.
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33 Links & How To Get Them — Shares with you 33 unique ways to build quality links.
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Ultimate Guide To Link Building With Images — It shows you how to use images for link building.
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Ethical Wikipedia Link Building – A Tutorial — Tells you how to use Wikipedia for link building as it can drive good targeted traffic to your website.
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How To Capture Broken Links — You can use broken links on other websites to get backlinks by contacting the webmasters of those websites.
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Building Links With Video Content — It teaches you how to build links using video content and explains the SEO benefits of video content.
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12 Valuable Tips For Video SEO Beginners — It shares 12 valuable tips to rank your videos higher on Google and YouTube.
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The Complete Guide To Link Building With Local Events — You can host local events to build your brand and it is a great way to attract links as well.
Social Media
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The Ultimate Glossary: 120 Social Media Marketing Terms Explained — It defines the 120 social media glossary terms that you should know before getting social.
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Ways Social Media Impacts SEO — Know the ways social media impacts SEO and thereby the ranking of your pages.
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The Social Media Marketer’s SEO Checklist — It gives a checklist of ways to optimize your content for search before (and after) promoting content on the social sites.
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14 Best Practices For Long-Term Social Media Success — Shows the 14 best practices for a successful social media marketing campaign.
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Top 10 Most Important SEO & Social Media Marketing Tactics — Lists the top 10 social media marketing tactics that you need to employ to improve your online marketing campaigns.
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Top 18 Social Networking (& Web 2.0) Sites To Drive Traffic — Lists the top 18 social media and web 2.0 sites that can drive traffic to your website.
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A Beginner’s Guide To Facebook, Twitter, Google+, & LinkedIn — It’s a beginner’s guide to get started on today’s popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.
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Categorized List Of Social Media And Social Networking Websites — A continuously updated list of over 400 social media and social networking sites.
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24 Must-Have Social Media Marketing Tools — Lists the most popular social media tools to enhance your social media marketing campaigns.
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17 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using (And Why) — Lists 17 less known social media tools that will help you to manage your social media profiles.
Website Architecture
Website architecture is all about Pagination (dividing content into discrete pages), Improving Bounce Rate & Site Speed, Managing Duplicate Content & Redirects, Web Analytics & Conversion Optimization etc.
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How Your Website’s Structure Affects Its SEO — It tells you how your ranking depends on the website’s underlying structure.
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What Is Pagination & When Is Pagination Necessary? — This one explains what pagination is and why pagination is important for SEO.
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Pagination Strategies In The Real World — Learn the best way to handle paginated sites and know some of the pagination strategies.
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Reduce Bounce Rate: 20 Things To Consider — Tells you why you should reduce your Bounce Rate (the estimated percentage of visits to your website that consist of a single page view) and offers 20 tips to optimize your bounce rate.
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Using Site Speed In Web Search Ranking — Official announcement by Google about using site speed in web search ranking.
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Why Site Speed Optimization Should Be Part Of Your SEO Strategy — It’s no secret that your site speed can impact your website ranking on Google SERPs so here’s an in-depth guide on why site speed should be a part of your SEO strategy.
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15 Tips To Speed Up Your Website — Offers 15 tips and tricks to speed up your website.
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The Only 7 Tools You’ll Ever Need To Check Page Speed Performance — Test your website speed score & get a performance report of web pages. Here are the 7 tools you’ll ever need to check the page load time.
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Using Google Webmaster Tools Like An SEO — An official Google video on how to use their Webmaster Tools as if you were the SEO for www.googlestore.com. It shows you how to utilize Search queries, reduce duplicate content, and maximize PageRank and other ranking signals to your important pages.
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Google Duplicate Content Guidelines: What You Need To Know — Here’s what Google’s Matt Cutts thinks about duplicate content penalty and SEO by uncovering some myths and facts.
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Specify Your Canonical — You can avoid duplicate content penalty by specifying your canonical (canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content).
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Learn About The Canonical Link Element In 5 Minutes — Get more insights about duplicate content and canonical link element in 5 minutes.
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A Basic Guide To Redirects — URL redirection (also known as URL forwarding) allows you to access a web page using more than one URL. This guide give more insights on “redirects”, its different types, and other aspects.
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Beginner’s Guide To Google Analytics — It tells you how to read and utilize your Google Analytic reports.
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Using Analytics To Measure SEO Success — Learn how to use Google Analytics to measure the success of your SEO campaign.
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Supercharge Your Conversion Rate Optimization — It tells you how to understand your visitors and that’s the key to creating a successful online marketing strategy.
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Top 20 Conversion Optimization Tips — Conversion rate optimization helps to grow your profits over time and here are 20 great conversion optimization tips.
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Why Conversion Optimization Strategy Trumps Tactics Every Time — It’s another comprehensive guide on how to do conversion optimization.
Even More SEO Articles
The title says everything! Here are some miscellaneous topics that you should read to get deeper insights about SEO.
If you want to know all about SEO, you obviously cannot skip the basics and then the types of SEO, the latest trends and of course the blunders you may make or how SEO companies can fool you. The links below are going to give you in-depth knowledge of all this and much more.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blogs
If you’re an internet marketer or an SEO then you must be up-to-date with the latest industry news.
Now subscribe to the following blogs and stay up-to-date with tips, strategies, and latest news.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Discussions
If you have questions about SEO or would like to help others to show your skills then join the following discussion forums.
Now you’ve got almost all the SEO resources you need. But the next step should be to apply everything you have learned. I’m pretty much sure that once you’ve gone through all the above resources you will find tons of tips and tricks that you will want to put into practice.
Happy SEO-ing!
Image Credit: Free Digital Photos
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The Definitive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Handbook is a post by Minterest
