Who is the best SEO Guru??

[salaka]

Hello warrior's

I am new arround here so your opinion would be good

I have read few SEO books and reports so far INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Who is in your opinion good SEO Guru??????

Thanks

[jtooder]

Aaron Wall of SEO Book
Rand Fishkin of SEO Moz

Are a couple of popular ones.

Ideally you want to become you own Guru with your own system.

JT

[Steven Miranda]

I would say Aaron Wall and Jeremy Shoemaker know what their talking about. Remember though, SEO is almost all based on opinions.

[umatt]

Aaron Wall is definitly somebody to recommend ... we have a membership there as well.

But the guru depends on what you looking for - nobody knows everything.... each one is a specialist in his area.

[Alexa Smith]

Peter Kent.

I strongly recommend avoiding most online information and dealing only with the newest editions of standard textbooks published by mainstream, orthodox publishers.

There's a very specific, very compelling reason for this: such textbooks have an enormous investment made in them by the publishers, before they're even printed. For this reason, they're obliged to be commissioned only from widely recognised, highly accredited, well qualified experts who are known and trusted, and their output is also peer-reviewed at every stage of its production.

Online information, by comparison, just isn't subject to any realistic, meaningful "quality control" at all and can be devastatingly unreliable.

Call me a skepchick, but over the last three years I've gradually and increasingly been realising that the generally prevalent views of SEO expressed online, especially by its practitioners (who always have a direct or indirect financial interest in whatever they're alleging) is little better than a collection of "urban myths of internet marketing".

Bear in mind that in a field of endeavour in which, out of all those "trying it", comparatively few people become truly successful, the "general consensus of opinion" is always likely to be fairly deeply flawed and erroneous.

Reading a few "established textbooks" really does open up a whole different world.

If it's of any help, for someone starting off and wanting to develop some understanding of the basics of SEO, I personally recommend the November 2010 edition of this fine book , whose author's professionalism, attention to detail and hard evidential research for what he says really show up a lot of "online SEO talk" for the nonsense it is.

[salaka]

Thanks guys will look at all the names

[Grindstone]

SEO is about testing. Start putting what you read to practice and soon you won't be overloaded with information, you'll start to see patterns and trends and the pieces will fall together.

The more you learn about SEO the more you realize there is to learn about SEO.

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Peter Kent.

I strongly recommend avoiding most online information and dealing only with the newest editions of standard textbooks published by mainstream, orthodox publishers.

There's a very specific, very compelling reason for this: such textbooks have an enormous investment made in them by the publishers, before they're even printed. For this reason, they're obliged to be commissioned only from widely recognised, highly accredited, well qualified experts who are known and trusted, and their output is also peer-reviewed at every stage of its production.

Online information, by comparison, just isn't subject to any realistic, meaningful "quality control" at all and can be devastatingly unreliable.

Call me a skepchick, but over the last three years I've gradually and increasingly been realising that the generally prevalent views of SEO expressed online, especially by its practitioners (who always have a direct or indirect financial interest in whatever they're alleging) is little better than a collection of "urban myths of internet marketing".

Bear in mind that in a field of endeavour in which, out of all those "trying it", comparatively few people become truly successful, the "general consensus of opinion" is always likely to be fairly deeply flawed and erroneous.

Reading a few "established textbooks" really does open up a whole different world.

If it's of any help, for someone starting off and wanting to develop some understanding of the basics of SEO, I personally recommend the November 2010 edition of this fine book, whose author's professionalism, attention to detail and hard evidential research for what he says really show up a lot of "online SEO talk" for the nonsense it is.

I find it funny Alexa constantly disparages online SEO advice, then praises a book written for Dummies that references online sources time and time again.

I've read the Dummy SEO book and it often refers to online resources itself. One of them is Word Tracker. BTW, one of Word Tracker's original developers was fellow Warrior Dave Kelly, who now runs Linkvana.

Let's take the opportunity to go through a few points Dummies makes about linking, and how Dummies advice seems to differ from Alexa's advice on the subject:

Try to obtain links from sites with varying PageRank values. (Note: the Google Toolbar PageRank scale ranks pages from 0 to 10, with www.google.com being a 10.) A natural distribution of links to any given page includes a majority of links from PR3 or lower pages. Generally, there should be fewer links from PR4 pages, even fewer from PR5, and so on. With that said, do not avoid getting a link from a higher PR page if you are obtaining it in an ethical way.

Multiple times I've advised Alexa that a MIX of PR is optimal, yet she doesn't seem to accept either my advice or that of Dummies. I've explained to her that having only a few "quality" or a bunch of "low quality" links isn't optimal, but a mix is. Dummies agrees with me.

Use social media sites (social networking sites like Facebook, communication sites like Twitter, social news sites like Digg, social bookmarking sites like Delicious, and so on) to generate interest in your site.

According to Alexa, one should only build their own sites and that using third part resources is a bad thing, due to not being in control or having the risk of being out-ranked by these other sites. Dummies and I disagree.

Linking pages should ideally have unique content, and not content used on other domains. The Title and Meta tags on linking pages should also be unique.

Totally contrary to what Alexa preaches....Over and over and over and over.

In some cases, an inbound link from a high quality education (.edu, but not student accounts) site should be considered. Inbound links from an .edu site can hold increased value when the link is relevant (for example,

...And...

Another thing that carries a lot of link equity weight is a link from a top-level domain (the root of a Web site’s URL) that ends in .edu or .gov. These are official domains that belong to colleges or the government. People

Again, not what Alexa recommends. I tend to agree with Alexa on this, however it's a good example of how "text books" can be out of date as soon as they are published, due to the time it takes to actually publish and print a book.

Note that Dummies doesn't mention Panda/Farmer.

Relevancy: Make sure the content on the Web page relates to your page content.

Notice how Dummies says web PAGE, not web site. Alexa claims article directories are not relevant, disregarding the actual page of the article itself, as well as the "siloed" category links on many article directories....And anyone that's read Dummies knows they love siloed internal link structure.

It doesn't matter if the link from the hamster site has great anchor text (the text that is the outgoing link). The search engine is going to read the surrounding text around the link on the hamster site, the overall content of the page, and the content of the site itself,

More on the subject about relevancy. Alexa constantly claims that the site has to be "contextual". I've explained to her that the site is only part of the relevance and that the words on the pages your link is on also plays a part in relevancy, especially if the links are contextual and not clustered.

I agree with Alexa in that it's optimal if the entire site is well themed. However, it's still very beneficial if a page or even the words near the link are relevant. Alexa seems to dismiss this concept in our previous discussions and doesn't accept Dummies opinion either.

Another way of going about obtaining links is working through RSS feeds and syndication. RSS is a method of offering a convenient way to distribute content on your Web site that you’d like others to use. In other words, it’s a mechanism to “syndicate” your content.

I've never heard Alexa ever mention RSS for syndication. I've taught Warriors about RSS since 2003.

What follows is a list of social networks at the time of writing that are good for search engine optimization (SEO). The Internet is an ever-changing entity, so it’s safe to say that this list will change and expand, but these are good places to start. All of these sites allow followable links in your profile area for search engines:

...And...

The following is a list of current social bookmarking sites.

Dummies gives lists of 2.0 sites and bookmarking sites to use to get links...And profile links. Taking from Alexa's previous posts, she's against building content on other sites that are beyond her control. Dummies seems to disagree.

Again, these are just a few things that seem to contradict Alexa's advice, despite her good review of Dummies.

IMO, Dummies is pretty good. It's weaknesses are it's too much and makes SEO seem too hard. While Dummies is very thorough (about 750 pages), I can honestly say I didn't learn anything new and there's really nothing original or thought provocative about it, which is good for noobs (dummies?) but if you've got any SEO experience it will only serve as a reminder in most cases.

It also doesn't discuss any grayhat/black hat techniques, many of which may work. And even if you don't want to use these tactics yourself, it's essential to know and understand them, as your competitors very well may use them.

Also lacking is there's no reviews for many of the linking services and software, good or bad.

All in all, Dummies reads like a school text book on SEO as opposed to a real working guide for the real world of SEO.

My review of Dummies will give it 7 stars out of 10. A good (and LONG) read, but far from essential and it sure doesn't offer ANY advice that isn't offered on the Web, despite Alexa's claims above.

[badlimey]

And by the time they get to print they are out of date. Stay on top of Google's Webmaster forum and you have all you need to perform SEO the correct way.

[yukon]

You'll never get anything from an seo book other than the basics, that every other seo/webmaster on the net already knows about.

A real seo knows seo by doing/testing on their own sites.

As an example, Flash can be used in advanced seo. I've got Google picking up my images in Google text SERPs & showing them as video thumbnails (lol) not Google image thumbnails. That video thumbnail is prime real estate in the SERPs.

I learned the above trick by testing, & you will never find that in a book.

You want to read, or you want to rank in the SERPs?

Reverse engineer the big boys sites, let them pay the big bucks for seo, then copy the tactic.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by badlimey

And by the time they get to print they are out of date. Stay on top of Google's Webmaster forum and you have all you need to perform SEO the correct way.

You can't be serious!

That forum is the last place on the net I would go to learn seo, you'll learn the basics that your competition & every other site on the net knew 10 years ago.

[frogman]

Originally Posted by salaka

Hello warrior's

I am new arround here so your opinion would be good

I have read few SEO books and reports so far INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Who is in your opinion good SEO Guru??????

Thanks

Save yourself a lot of time, money, and frustration and just take action on the courses you have already read.
That's the only way you will really learn.
Chasing the hottest guru is a looser's game.

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by frogman

Save yourself a lot of time, money, and frustration and just take action on the courses you have already read.
That's the only way you will really learn.
Chasing the hottest guru is a looser's game.

I agree, you can't just follow the gurus and expect to ace SEO.

I learnt this a long time ago, you actually need to do your own testing and find out what works best for you.

Things that work for some people won't work for others.

There are just too many variations and contributors for every theory in SEO that it is a jungle in here!

You will see two sides in almost EVERY SEO claim on the internet, which is really because of two things:

1. It is very difficult to ACCURATELY measure SEO tactics.

2. There are too many variables in every SEO tactic.

Test, test, test.

It may seem pointless to you now but getting into the habit of testing everything will allow you to understand the real truths of the industry.

[ashokseo]

Originally Posted by salaka

Hello warrior's

I am new arround here so your opinion would be good

I have read few SEO books and reports so far INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Who is in your opinion good SEO Guru??????

Thanks

Nothing particular!
Anyone who can achieve top ranking using white hat methods is top SEO guru

[YasirYar]

Originally Posted by salaka

Hello warrior's

I am new arround here so your opinion would be good

I have read few SEO books and reports so far INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Who is in your opinion good SEO Guru??????

Thanks

There really is no GURU if you look at it..

SEO is all about creating a method of link building etc which suits you and your website.

Yes the basics are the same, but everyone uses their own methods.