SEO Training for Beginners thro' Expert Consultant Level

"Is Basic SEO Difficult?" As with any question, the answer to this is relative to your own situation.

If you are already a competent webmaster, then of course it's going to much easier for you than for a 64 year old short-sighted computer-phobic Grandad.

For the purposes of this article and those to follow we're going to assume that you are reasonably adept on a PC and the web, understand what SEO is and the need for it, and most importantly (to sustain motivation) that you have a keen interest in doing the work yourself in preference to hiring in an expert SEO consultant or company, as choosing a good one of those is a whole other subject.

If you want to learn SEO most people have several main options:

1. Teach Yourself (free) - Blogs - Forums Experimentation
2. Learn via a Paid Subscription Service - SEOBook, SEOMoz etc
   
3. Bespoke SEO training - any level.
   

Again, the approach you take will suit your own circumstances and budget, and each has advantages (and in some case disadvantages) over the others, let's delve a bit deeper.

• Pros - limitless good SEO information exists on the web free
  

• Cons - everybody supplies "expert SEO services" who do you listen to?
  

If you're just starting out in the SEO world the dearth of information available on the millions of "SEO publications" on the internet is absolutely overwhelming, and you can literally waste years reading (or worse still, actually implementing) regurgitated and out-of-date irrelevant nonsense.

Forums in particular can be populated by "talkers not doers" who use big words and like to sound important, but often have no current experience, clients or clue.

As always, knowledge is power, and it's knowing which are the good sites to focus on and just ignore all the noise, which is the key. At the bottom of this article we have listed what we consider all the best of breed free SEO blogs to learn on.

• Advantages - Extensive SEO tools suites, awesome comprehensive resources and private forums full of helpful people
  

• Disadvantages - Costly on an ongoing basis, sometimes too much non-specific -to-your-site information, to wade through.

Depending on your needs this solution may or may not suit, if you have the long term aim of becoming an SEO expert this is probably the best route to start.

However many people just have one specific site or project they want to take on and this is when option 3 becomes the sensible choice.

• Advantages - time savings - straight to the heart of your situation (your site) - no irrelevant to your situation info to churn through, expert specific experience and advice.
  

• Disadvantages - costly for some people.
  

In our opinion, if you have a specific project in mind that needs action fast, on-the-job training from a professional who spends all day every day dealing with cases just like yours is invaluable, and usually the most cost and time efficient approach.

It is not advisable to practice or test on your own site until you feel entirely comfortable with what you are doing, particularly if the site is already getting *some* business.

It is very easy initially to make mistakes that can wreck your current performance, so unless you have nothing to lose, do not set about your site's coding armed with what they said in Digitalpoint that day!

Ultimately you have to decide how much time you have to devote to your training and how much time need to be just spent doing the work, once you know what needs to be done, if time = money to you, bespoke training will nearly always be the most cost efficient option when you factor in the likely speed of results on your site.

In future hubs we will provide parts of modules we use in bespoke training consultations to form (yet another) online SEO guide, that hopefully is a bit different from all the rest, covering the subjects outlined below:

• The very beginning - Domains keywords and research tools
• Best free SEO Tools
• Search techniques to assess your market's competitivity
• Onsite SEO - what's important, what's not, (several hubs worth) plus a few pro tricks
• Links, internal & external - whats a good link?
• SEO Content & creation
  
• Offsite SEO strategies (several hubs worth)
  
• Wordpress SEO Ranking Strategies 
• Hubpages SEO - how to outrank other hubs

In the meantime our recommendations for the best free and paid SEO resources and forums are below.