I have been asked many times about what training courses I would recommend to someone who has no past experience with SEO. There are plenty of bogus search engine training courses on the market. Some teach you tactics that are either outdated or can get you in trouble. Some waste your time covering topics that don’t have anything to do with the art of search engine optimization. It’s impossible to test out every single training course that is available on the market, but you don’t need them all to become a master. There are a lot of things you can learn from forums and blogs out there. Going through a SEO training should be the start of your journey and not the end of it.

If you are looking to get yourself trained in the art of search engine optimization, you should look at these 4 SEO training programs:

SEOmoz: I mostly use this service for its tools, but there is plenty of training material available with this program as well. The good part of this training course is that you learn the fundamentals and get a real sense of what SEO is all about, especially by using their tools.

SEOBook: still one of the best SEO training courses on the market. Aaron Wall made quite a name for himself when he launched SEOBook a while back. Fast forward to today, and the course includes a wealth of information on search engines. (more…)

The field of search engine optimization is one of the hottest fields in the search engine industry. Whether you are looking to get more traffic for your blog or drive free leads to your business, search engine optimization is one of the best way to go. But learning the art of SEO and keeping up with the latest developments can be sometimes a hassle. It’s not that easy to keep up with such a dynamic field. Google changes its algorithm on a consistent basis which means you’ll have to read on to keep up. And I am not talking about reading classic books. Reading the most recent SEO books and supplementing it with what you learn from blog and forums can help you stay up to date in the field of SEO.

If you have fallen a bit behind as far as SEO is concerned, you should read these fairly recent books to get back on the right track:

Search Engine Marketing, Inc: a great book that helps you find out about the latest developments in the search engine industry. Great for SEO directors and the higher ups.

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies: you can’t really argue with the quality of this book. Bruce Clay has written one of the most comprehensive books ever written on search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization Bible: another great book that gets you familiar not only with the latest developments in the field of SEO, but it also shows you how to get the best out of the social media.

The Findability Formula: a high level book that is written for those who don’t have the proper technical knowledge when it comes to search engine marketing. This book shows you how to use search engines to drive lead to your business and take your brand to the next level.

There you have it. I am sure these books will be outdated in their due time, but right now they provide you with the most up to date information to enable to keep up with the latest in the field of SEO.

As the economy struggles to rebound, a lot of companies are cutting their advertising budget and even getting rid of their SEO teams. There is no question in my mind that doing the exact opposite is the way to go in these tough times. But you can’t always convince folks to spend money when they are hurting. If you are a small business and can’t afford to hire a company to do your SEO for you, you can always try to learn how to do it yourself. A lot of people ask me “who I get started with SEO.” There is no one size fits all solution here. You can always pick up books and take your time learning about search engine optimization. A faster way to do it is by purchasing a video course and going through it on a weekend. But my favorite method is attending a Search Engine Strategies training session.

Search Engine Strategies training sessions are one of the best ways to get an overview of what search engine optimization in just a few days. Moreover, you don’t have to worry about getting outdated information in these sessions. You get the latest developments and tricks in the SEO world from world class experts. These sessions are not cheap, but you learn here can help you save a lot of money in your business and set yourself apart from many of your competitors. Here is what you can expect to learn from Search Engine Strategies training sessions:

• Website Programming + SEO
• Keyword Research
• SEO Analytics
• Linking Strategies that Increase Rankings
• Social Media
• SEO In a Corporate Environment

SES training sessions are going to cost you a few hundred dollars but that’s only a small fraction of what you would be paying a SEO firm to optimize your site for search engines. And most of those services are overpriced anyway. You just can’t learn SEO any faster than by going to one of these sessions.

Your turn: will you be at Denver for SES training?

I have been lucky enough to be involved in affiliate marketing, PPC, and other marketing segments in the past few years. What I have realized is most affiliate marketers don’t pay enough attention to the ABCs of SEO. In other words, they don’t get the basics straight and go in expecting to get ranked on top search engines regardless. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen monumental affiliate sites that do not have optimized title tags. The concept behind these sites are great, but if you forget the most important SEO tactics, you are not going to get ranked as well as you should.

A lot of affiliates argue that SEO is not their “cup of tea.” That they are good with marketing, but not with the technical “stuff.” In reality, you don’t need to be a super geek to be able to implement the basics of SEO. Advanced SEO often requires some technical knowledge but even that shouldn’t be an issue if you have the drive to learn (There are plenty of sources such as AffiloRama that can teach you how to implement advance SEO tactics).

In order to achieve higher traffic from organic search, you should at least take time to do the bare minimum. In essence, you should be prepared to:

• do proper keyword research before setting up your affiliate site. Choosing the right keywords can bring you lots of targeted traffic and who doesn’t want that.
• optimize your website tags (including title, meta, alt, header, and robots) in order to give yourself a better chance of getting ranked high on search engines.
• optimize your website structure (URLs, file names, and directory names) to get the most out of your content.
• optimize your sitemap and robots.txt files to help engines find your pages, and  reduce content duplication issues.
• feed your website with fresh, optimized content in order to keep search agents coming back for more.
• use the social media to drive extra traffic to your website (through providing valuable content to your readers).
• optimize your website linking structure (internal links) to help Google understand the theme(s) within your site.
• gather incoming links (inbound links) from article directories, web directories, blogs, forums, and other sources.

The above steps are a general blue-print on how to optimize an affiliate site for the search engines. Most of the above steps do not require you to be a super geek, which means there should be no excuse for you not to do them. Are you getting the most organic traffic out of your affiliate sites?

That’s the most burning question that people who are new to search engine optimization often ask. “How can I get up to speed with SEO fast!” That’s really the nature of the game. People who don’t know anything about search engine optimization don’t want to waste their time reading multiple books and training packages to come up to speed. It takes time and is not the best way of using your time to read the same things over and over again. So I am going to use this post to talk about how I would go about learning Search Engine Optimization:

• Read Books: SEO books may not be as important as they used to be. The industry is too volatile now to get a snapshot of it in a book. Having said that, books are getting updated every 6 months or a year. You should at least get a new SEO book every quarter to read on the new topics. Of course, if you are a SEO pro, you can keep up with the latest developments with blogs, forums, and so on, but if you are VP of marketing and just want to know enough to be dangerous, books are the way to go (SEO Bible is currently the one SEO book that is updated with social media and other new developments in the industry).
• Read Blogs: there are not many SEO blogs out there for beginners, but you can use blogs such as “search engine watch” to keep up with the latest developments in the industry. You may not understand everything that is going on, but you wouldn’t look baffled when someone talks about, let’s say, “local” search.
• Advanced Training: a lot of SEO gurus used to have books, white-papers, and things of that nature for those who were interested in SEO training. Guys like Aaron Walls created digital SEO training packages that were much more comprehensive and cutting edge than ordinary books. But they also understood the nature of industry, so that’s why we see membership sites such as SEO Book and Immediate Edge. I would focus on these training packages after reading a book or two on SEO. These are not for everyone but those who want to stay on the edge of the search industry.
• Seminars/In-class Training: Bruce Clay and SEMPO both have in class training and certification program for SEO. Once again, these are not for everyone as they are expensive. Having said that, a lot of people prefer going to seminars such as SES to learn things than actually taking time to read up on stuff.
• Paid Subscriptions: I talked about subscription-based training courses (e.g. SEOBook) above. But sites such as SEOmoz offer subscription based information (similar to Economist’s service). You get the latest industry analysis and premium news using such services. If you can afford it, these sites are worth looking at.
• SEO In Practice: practice makes perfect, and one way to do that is by buying a software package such as Web Position or SEO-Elite. These packages have comprehensive manuals that show you how to do things with practice (given with their software). I personally learned a lot of what I know from playing with these software packages.

As you can see by now, there is no short-cut in this process. It does take time, and if you don’t know anything, it will take even more time. But reading a book usually is the fastest way to get your feet wet in the SEO industry.

Just heard the news that Dan Raine and co are going to upgrade the immediate edge program. The immediate edge program is an advanced online marketing community that discusses the latest developments on the Web  such as FaceBook marketing, Google Slaps, and …. You can find out more about the immediate edge program here but don’t even bother if you are a beginner.