Returning to SEO after a few years

Assimilate your knowledge from various sources. I don't believe a single person will be able to teach you everything because what they teach is based on their own experience. Different people will have different experiences.


Just MHO

Honestly, I think the foundations still apply. There are certain tweaks, sure, but if you were a good SEO guy in the past, your basic knowledge should still be applicable.

Buy a test domain or two, or set up free Blogger sites, and try it out to see what's changed. Through experimentation, you can find out more about specific techniques.

The gold in IM is the steel that lasts through time, not the shiny stuff that works briefly and then fizzles out.

Just dig in and get your hands dirty, SEO is different for every engine and keyword today, you need to truly get an analytical mind around competition and take both on and off page factors into account like never before.

I follow the "bring it dont sing it" structure to the game, but if your looking at selling your services and you actually know what your doing, dont waste your time with low ballers, your better off taking over all their traffic if they want to see what you are worth. I work on my own projects unless I am paid well enough to take a project and client on...


Best of luck

I think the best free SEO resource is Dan Thies book at seofaststart.com

Dan is definitely a White Hat. But not because he's a saint, it's more because he believes it's inefficient to just look for ways to get mass amounts of links (profiles, link wheels, spinning articles, Web 2.0 spamming). I agree 100%.

I've been doing SEO for 6 years on my sites. I've done it all. Networks of blogs, link networks, Web 2.0, Link wheels before they were called link wheels, etc. I think you can boil down your efforts to 3 things...

1) Proper internal site structure. When this happens, it makes for a more efficient machine once the links come to your site. Also you make sure you get all your pages indexed.

2) Anchor text--This is where mass links come into play. Submitting to article directories and stuff like this does help when it comes to just racking up lots of links. But most people overdo this part and never take it to the next level..which is..

3) Real Links--As in links that can actually provide some juice to your site. That means doing the harder work of actually getting real websites to link to you.

If you do all 3, you'll be in a good position. Unfortunately, most people just think they can setup endless amounts of link wheels, profiles pages, and spun articles.

You are fine.
No major things changed.
Only Google Places did.

traditional SEO is still the same.

Regards,

Mike

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

That's really the best resource for the basics of seo. They've got seo starter guides and everything but you shouldn't ignore the actual blog either. There really is not anything out there with better information as everything else is just rewritten straight from the blog or a plain lie.

Follow the 3 steps Dave said. It is very useful to gain decent ranks. Anyway if you are coming after a long time, it is better learn how to use Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to your website (SMO).