Free SEO Help: Blogs, Forums, and Articles

The Web is crammed with free SEO help. The trick isn't finding help, but winnowing out the good help from all the mediocre or outright dangerous help out there. Here are some tips from an experienced webmaster.

The first place to look for help with search engine optimization is from the search engines themselves. All of the large search engines run blogs whose writers are members of the programming team and whose purpose is to help readers optimize their sites. Often contributing writers spend time on webmastering forums to learn what problems working webmasters are having, so the articles are timely and practical, not theoretical. The quickest way to locate search engines' blogs is to search for "blog" or "official blog" and the name of the search engine.

Forums are a good, but tricky, source of free SEO help. On one hand, webmasters' accounts of their experiences and the ensuing debates are indispensable. Webmasters with experience often know when algorithm changes are about to take place, and can discuss changes, legal issues, and other SEO issues freely and without the corporate constraints and need to protect the search engine's interests that the search engines' own bloggers have. Search engines sometimes refuse to discuss or flat out deny certain patterns in their algorithms' behavior, so the only way to get adequate information about certain aspects of a search engine may be through discussion with other webmasters. On the other hand, forum members can also be... How to say this politely? Flaming morons. How do you tell which forums to go to and which members to listen to? There is no substitute for familiarizing yourself with a few forums and watching them over time. Seeing whether an official speaker for a given search engine is a member of the forum is a good idea as well. While an official speaker isn't a stamp of trustworthiness, his or her presence does mean that the forum is influential enough for the search engine to take note. The two forums you should definitely put on your watch list are WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint. To find more, search for "SEO forum."

Free SEO help articles are equally hard to sift through: There are reams of good articles, and a vast ocean of mediocre, wrong, or actively harmful articles. Avoid article directories and "experts" whose main area of expertise is grinding out several dozen SEO articles a week. Look for industry sites and authors whose network of sites you have heard of. Also look for small, expert written article collections and blogs, like that at HubShout. Avoid articles with the rehashed "SEO article" feel: flat, stuffed with keywords, and full of synonyms that make no sense.

As you can see, getting the best from the available free SEO help takes judgment and a touch of experience on your part as well as the ability to use a search engine. Go slow, verify facts before you put any piece of advice into use, and build a sound base of knowledge, and soon you will be able to tell the good free Seo help from the bad.