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Crosspost from Business/Finance, no replies there. Before I begin looking into SEO consulting firms and hiring people outside of my company, I'd really like to have enough background knowledge on how search engine optimization actually works. It doesn't seem like a good idea to schedule time with an expensive firm on a subject I have absolutely no knowledge in. I'm a little lost, however, as to where I should start. Can anyone recommend a place, or places, where I can start to build a working knowledge of how SEO works, the mathematics behind it, etc.? I can provide more information on the question if necessary.
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Mar 4, 2016 18:44
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Do this http://www.google.com.au/onlinechallenge/dmc/index.html and adwords certification. It's a very difficult subject in that SEO is a money pit. What kind of business do you run, if you don't mind me asking?
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Mar 7, 2016 15:15
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xutech posted:Do this http://www.google.com.au/onlinechallenge/dmc/index.html I'm only in charge (for personnel and briefing our investors purposes) of the marketing and SEO side of things while we work on finding some dedicated individuals. Our product is a tool for establishing trends in the way educational institutions distribute grants and funding (can't say much more). In terms of it being a money pit: assuming our least viable product is good enough to generate an adequate amount of buzz from our customers, is time or money the early-stage limiting factor for how much attention we can generate through SEO?
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Mar 8, 2016 01:05
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I don't know much about SEO except on very base level, but I do know a lot about branding as I own a small graphic design/branding firm. Are you also looking to brand this product/company/etc? That involves a lot of strategic thinking beyond just "getting a logo from Fivrr" which is where a specialty firm comes into play. That kind of up-front thinking helps shape the entire brand as a whole and certainly plays into the keywords used in SEO.
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Mar 8, 2016 17:18
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Here ya go: https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo Some other things that might help when dealing with vendors: SEO is often split into two types of plans. Depending on who you work with some companies endorse a setup program where they do bare-bones research (competitive analysis, content audit, setting up any custom tracking, baseline reporting, etc) and then do a one-time implementation run. But most companies will try to get you on a rotating month-by-month retainer with the idea that they'll review, report, and adjust the work as necessary so you see continuous growth. Frankly, the latter has always come off to me as being somewhat scamish because the best performing sites are often the ones that are built to be the most usable from the ground up. Human-readable URLs, good information architecture, well-written content, no accessibility issues, a responsive (or at least mobile) design, fast load times, prominent exposure on other reputable websites (think PR or industry-related sources), etc. Most of the time these are things that you already control and a lot of digital marketing companies/professionals are borderline useless when it comes to actually improving any of those aspects for you. My advice is to find a consultant who can road map everything out for you and help you setup whatever custom tracking you need. At bare minimum they should be able to develop an actual strategy, identify what your audience is searching for, provide suggestions for how to optimize your site around those terms (if not outright write the content for you), and possibly give you some suggestions about how to test and improve conversion rates over time. Then either grind out the work yourself or have whoever manages your site do it. Once you have a strategy and to-do list, their expertise is (usually) no longer needed. By the way, SEO can be a real slow grind with teeny tiny incremental bits of improvement over time. If you really need to get some traction SEM and PPC advertising might be more worthwhile.
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Aug 20, 2016 07:53
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