By Kyle Courtright
The best advice I could give to any small business owner is this: Never stop learning. It doesn’t matter what space you are in, how big your business is, or what kind of revenue your business produces, learning plays a huge role in growth. One area where constant learning is required to stay in the game? Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is a term that is frequently thrown around, most people have heard it, but not everyone knows what it means. SEO is simple and complex all at the same time. Boiled down to it’s simplest form, it’s a set of strategies to increase traffic and page rank in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
The strategies themselves are where SEO gets complex. Google has a set of algorithms that are constantly changing. This is where the continual learning comes in. You can’t optimize your site once and expect to always have a high page rank. Because the algorithms are constantly changing, you have to constantly be learning the new updates and applying them to your website. Or you can pay someone to do it for you. Either way, it is essential for your websites growth and success.
If you are somewhat tech savvy and willing to take on the challenge there are a lot of resources out there to help you! There are a number of SEO experts out there that make their information accessible for everyone and easy to understand! Here’s a list of some of the best SEO experts with great online resources.
1. Neil Patel
This guy is THE MAN. He is a cofounder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. His work has been recognized by President Obama as one of the top 100 Entrepreneurs under the age of 30. This guy is crazy smart and knows his stuff. One of Patel’s biggest clients? Amazon. He’s the real deal. The best part? He has a blog filled with great SEO information and resources.
2. Matt Cutts
This guy has been working for Google since 2000. If anyone knows SEO, it’s Cutts. He has hundreds of videos on a whole range of subjects including SEO. If you are new to the idea of SEO, videos can be a huge help. One great way to browse his videos is on TheShortCutts.com — a searchable directory of all videos Matt Cutts produced, with quick question and answers printed right under the video.
3. Rand Fishkin
Have you heard of Moz.com? It’s one of the best SEO sites on the web. Fishkin created this site, and still contributes to the blog from time to time. Moz.com is a great resource for small business owners looking to grow their site traffic and increase their page rank with SEO.
4. Aaron Wall
Wall is the founder of SEObook.com which is a great resource for small business owners. It is filled will tons of practical SEO knowledge and is easy to understand even if you don’t have much prior knowledge of SEO.
5. Nick Eubanks
SeoNick.net was founded by Eubanks has great testimonials with readers raving about the site’s content. Check out his site for all sorts of helpful SEO tips and techniques.
Since starting my own small business I’ve made mistakes; I’ve made progress; and I’ve learned a lot about SEO along the way. These resources have allowed me to do it myself, saving my small business thousands of dollars in SEO consulting. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but the results have been completely worth it.
Who are your favorite SEO experts? What has been the most valuable lesson you’ve learned from them?
