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So you want to be an SEO, do you? You think a career in analytics is what you seek? Figure online marketing is right up your alley? Certain you’d make a cracker-jack social media consultant?
If you’re wondering what it takes to succeed in the world of online marketing, I can tell you it takes a dedication to learning. Because you start, and never stop in the quest to keep up with the latest changes. It’s rare that you can go to school for this stuff. Most colleges/universities simply don’t offer the courses yet. And most that do are either way too light on the right info, or are woefully out of date.
That said, there are a few that are right up there with the best programs offered by non-accredited sources. I’ll do my best to track them down and list them here.
Otherwise, SEO training and training for more general online marketing, as well as social media management training can be easily found online. Not all programs are equal though, so choose carefully. I’m going to try to list some you can trust below, the main goal being if you start your research here, you can at least trust you’ll get a good program.
After that, it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your future and your wallet.
What I will say, regardless of which program in which area you take, is that you’d better pay attention and be ready to use your skills in the real world. That’s why most people who are successful in the SEO and online marketing world run their own websites. It’s the best way to try new things and understand what works and why. Experimentation is critical for long term success, and you’d better do that on your own time, as opposed to your employer’s time. Messing up your blog’s ranking is one thing. Tanking your employer’s website ensures a short career.
And lest you think just taking some training will enable you to hang a shingle and dive in as a consultant, think again. Today’s businesses are savvy and many insist on solid contracts up front, many with performance-based clauses. Smart businesses also build in clauses that protect them from negligence on your part. In short, if you screw up, your liable for their losses.
It’s the training plus experience that helps build a solid career as an SEO or online marketer, so don’t skip the step of building experience. Take your time, hit all the right steps and learn the ropes in your chosen field. The end result is well worth it and won’t take as long as you think. The market for SEO, online marketing, social media, mobile, analytics and conversion optimization experts is growing monthly as businesses realize the need for a deeper, more optimized presence online.
Now, here is the list of training programs:
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In this section we’ll be looking at standalone SEO Tools. Full toolsets we’ll cover in another section. These tools are generally designed to do a single thing. Some are free, others require memberships, signups or recurring payments. Software will be treated as a different subset of SEO tools, as well, so will be covered in a different section.
SEO Tools come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and it’s worth spending some time getting to know a new tool before you fully commit to making decisions based on the data it shows. The worst thing you can do is begin making business decisions based on data a tool shows you, if, for example, you selected the incorrect settings on the tool.
The tools exist to help you make decisions, but they do not absolve you from having to understand SEO. The tools will offer guidance, but you still need to know if what they are saying makes sense, will work with your systems and future plans and if you should even bother. Understanding how SEO works will help you know if you should bother will every suggestion a tool makes. Understanding SEO will help you know which suggestions will return the best results for your investment of time and money.
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Plugins are a great way to add useful tools to your systems, servers, web browsers and more. I’m going to contain myself to mostly plugins related to WordPress and maybe some other popular content management systems simply because that’s what I know. In addition, I’ll expand the list to include plugins for FireFox and Internet Explorer and if I find any useful ones for other browsers, I’ll list them out and review them, too.
If you are not sure what “plugin” refers to, it’s pretty simple. A “plugin” is an add on that you “plug in” to whatever is appropriate. WordPress has literally hundreds of plugins available to manage a range of things for you. They make it easier to complete work or actions. Building a gallery and managing images can be handled through a plugin. Managing SEO-related work can be done via a plugin. Gathering SEO data about your website and other websites can be done via plugins for Firefox.
Plugins can make your life a lot easier by easily integrating access to things you want to do. Usually, they’re pretty easy to install as well. Plugins for systems like WordPress work best if you have access to the server to upload them onto. Hosted WordPress solutions often do not enable the ability to upload things directly onto the server, meaning you are stuck with whatever plugins the host installs.
Plugins for Firefox, on the other hand, require a few clicks to install and a restart of the browser to activate them. Simple as pie.
So here’s a list of SEO, online marketing, social media management and other useful plugins.
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Keyword research is the most important part of any effort to build a website. If you know what users are looking for, you know what topics to target when you create content or showcase products. Keyword research uncovers this information for you.
(List of tools below)
You should understand that user search trends change over time, so it’s a good idea to refresh your keyword research data on a regular schedule.
Ideally, a keyword research tool should allow easy, quick access to detailed data. Many tools exist today to help you perform this work, and they range from simple online services to products supplied by the engines themselves. You need to understand your needs before you settl eon a tool, as well. Knowing your seasonality (or lack thereof), will help inform the selection of tools. Some tools only show you a 30 day window of data. While this may seem like enough, be warned that unless you track the data manually, you may think seasonal terms have more traffic than they really do. Holiday related searches spike at various times, and a tool only showing the past 30 days of data may be too short a window to truly show you the yearly trend. Bottom line is you could end up thinking there is a lot of traffic on a term, when that traffic only happens once per year.
Other tools show you around one year of data, which is an excellent way to flatten seasonal trends and help you see what a longer period of user data looks like.
As mentioned, some tools are third party, while others are direct form the search engines themselves. These tools offer an excellent way to gain insight via trusted sources, though you should remember that even these tools represent only a snap shot of the true quantity of searches users perform on any given phrase or word.
Every tool should be capable of showing you not only data on exactly what you asked for, but also data on related phrases to the one you inquired about. Your chosen keyword research tool should allow you to export your data so you can manipulate it on your own time.
Finally, it’s important to know that if you use a variety of keyword research tools, you’ll see a variety of results. This is due to the sources of the data, obviously. The key point here is to remember to treat this data as a trend. If you graphed the numbers shown between keyword research tools, the graphs should be roughly the same. You should be focused on the trend, which points to the most searched on phrases, rather than the absolute numbers shown in any tool.
Keyword Research Tool list:
Microsoft Advertising Keyword Research Tool – (It’s an excel plugin – super simple to install and use.)
Yahoo Clues – cool tool from Yahoo
YouTube offers us their tool for researching keywords and phrases
Google’s Keyword Research Tool – be careful with the settings to get best results
Google Insights
Google Trends
SEOBook’s Keyword Tool – requires at least a free account
Keyword Discovery – requires a free account; to see deeper data, you must pay
WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool – requires you to pay to see deeper data
Tag Crowd – cool tool
Keyrow – very cool
Hittail keyword tool – 60 day free trial, paid model after that. Great tool if you are active with managing your content and mapping to targeted keywords.
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Analytics are probably one of, if not, the most important aspects you need to consider for your website. Analytics refers to software or services which captures a record of the traffic coming and going from your website. There are free and paid-for analytics systems. There are dedicated services designed to help you get a handle on these important numbers.
These systems are where you will learn how many unique visitors came to your site. You’ll also find the total number of visits those unique visitors, and returning visitors accumulated. You’ll see page views, time on site, paths through your site and more. Some systems show you site overlays to understand what links users clicked on while on your site. Almost all systems will tell you which site the users came to you from and whether this was a search engine or other type of website. Most will also get granular enough to help you understand which individual keywords users entered at a search engine to end up on your site.
The data your analytics package shares with you will enable you to make the important business decisions you need to make to add value on your website. By tracking user behavior, you can adjust your site design and layout to better showcase your content and increase conversions.
As mentioned, there are free systems and paid-for systems. Larger websites often benefit from the more robust systems, while smaller websites can usually manage with free analytics systems. While this not a hard and fast rule, it generally holds true. Be sure to balance the data and ability to manipulate that data against potential costs for data collection.
Here’s a starter list of some commonly referenced analytics systems:
www.awstats.net
www.clicktale.com
www.coremetrics.com
www.excellentanalytics.com
www.getclicky.com
www.goingup.com
www.googleanalytics.com
www.iwebtrack.com
www.lyris.com
www.omniture.com
www.onestat.com
www.openwebanalytics.com
www.piwik.org
www.sas.com
www.truviso.com
www.webtrends.com
www.wordstream.com
There is even a web analytics association to help get you certified as a web analyst.
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