Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey guys, I'm actually looking for the same answer: should I choose to use RDFa or Microformats? I've searched if any of my competitors are getting rich results in the SERPs but their not so it's kinda hard to figure out what to use. Supporting Schema.org is an obvious one because, as Peter states, the SE's are pushing it. Even though they're not using it extensively yet there's a good chance they will make much more use of it in the future. Anyway, also I would greatly appreciate some more input. Thanks in advance!

Some details on infographic promotion.... http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=how+to+promote+an+infographic In my mind the article that will accompany the infographic will have all of the kickass details.  With results like you are showing, everybody everywhere will want to learn as much as possible about the nitty gritty details.  That is what will earn traffic and links.  The infographic is promotion for the article IMO.

I have had a good experience with MediaWiki. Another fairly good one is PBWiki.

I agree with EGOL 100% on this. When I first started learning SEO I went to different forums and browsed the threads for hours. I joined SEOMOZ and read everything and watched everything I could get my hands on. Eventually when I felt I had a good base, I created a website about a hobby I was into at the time, something that I was passionate about so it would keep me interested. That’s where I really started to learn SEO. After starting that site, I could pinpoint sections I was lacking and ask specific questions to the SEO community and do more research on it. In my honest opinion, $3,500 is WAY too much since you can find anything and everything to need to know about SEO for free. Just need the motivation.

What's the general level of competition like for the terms you are tracking? If its a low competition niche and you are the only real player in it, then it might be something you are doing wrong rather than the other sites doing right. Are you still ranking well or have you suffered a big drop?

Hi Debal, Sounds like an interesting subject, but I don't quite get what it is that you are asking. Can you rephrase that?

I did not purchase the video bundle for 2011, but having either gone through myself or my staff having gone through many of the power points available from the agenda, we will purchase the bundle.  I see an email circulate every other day re Some Takeaways from _____ ppt.

There are lots of great conferences that cover social media. I would start with SocialFresh and even mozcon of course. Kind of depends on what you're looking to get out of it though. Community Management is a subset (of sorts) of social media and there are lots of great conferences on that as well. As far as content that you can use and/or repurpose for your own use internally....so much of this type of content is custom to your own situation, niche and goals so I would take that into consideration. That being said one of the best forms of reusable IP within social comes in the form of a playbook for cross-organizational use. I would highly recommend taking a look at the Radian6 Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Playbook. Might be a good place to start. This is a loose and completely unofficial look at Pfizer's Social Media Playbook that may help give you some ideas as well. If you're into developing your own from the bottom up, I've heard (not read myself) that this is a great book from Tom Funk. Alternatively it can be incredibly helpful to have a company external to your own org come in and develop customized training based on your organizational strategies. The outputs of that training can then be built upon and repurposed over time.

Hi James, There are two ways to do this; 1. In Webmaster tools, there is a link under the Optimization menu to remove a URL, 2. Or if you'rve got access to your robots.txt file, just add the following to the bottom: Disallow: /airport-cab/?show=gallery This will remove it from the Google index next time the file is crawled. If you are on Wordpress, and do not currently have an SEO plugin, try Yoast's, and use the Edit Files sub-menu to edit your robots file there.

Yes, but a lot of the topics discussed are still key concepts. The fundamentals of SEO haven't really changed, just the means of achieving optimization has. On Page SEO is still extremely important along with the creation of quality content, and quality links. Even though the book is dated, you can still learn a lot from it. The industry is also constantly changing, which is why, in my second response, I recommended to subscribe to some of the prominent SEO Blogs' RSS Feeds.

I have been attending Pubcon in Las Vegas every year since 2003. I have only missed 1 or 2. Also, Pubcon is the only conference I have attended. What I'd say about Pubcon is that I look forward to it every year, year after year. It's a busy 3-4 days conference. Usually 6-10 sessions running concurrently and the topics vary from On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Paid Search, Affiliate, Conversion Optimization, Social Media and so on. There are usually around 100+ sessions in total to choose from. Overall a great event to attend. What will you learn ? Well, that's a tough one to answer. Usually I don't go to conferences and expect something to learn other then meet a lot of nice people in different industries. Sometimes you talk to people, hear out speakers and see them talk about specific strategies they use or specially the tools. I love the tools part. There's always something new to learn in the SEO Tools area. Other then that, talking with people and attending sessions kind of gives you a very broad/but in-depth overview of where the industry is moving, whats going on in the world of search. I also have Mozcon/Distilled/SMX Advanced/SES to the list of conferences I would consider attending based on timing and budget. I hope this helps.

Thanks, everyone, for your responses. Rand now has the questions, and he'll be answering one in this month's newsletter!

For a very basic overview these 'in plain English' videos are a good start (but a little dated now): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o&feature=plcp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI&feature=plcp Getting more advanced you could point them in the direction of the FB for business page: http://www.facebook.com/business which contains videos, guides and success stories.

If your still looking for resources, I downloaded this great ebook from Boostability.  It's got a lot of basic stuff, but is also a great tool to reference.

I haven't made my final decision yet, but leaning toward Search Exchange since it is in one of my cities.

Are we allowed gratuitous self promotion? Check out http://www.emarketeers.com/training-courses/seo-training which is accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing CPD Programme. We're only training in the UK at the moment however.

I've heard great things about Basecamp as well.  It's only 20 bucks a month, so that's not bad.  Hey, Tod, you might have talked me into it!

Thank Keri. Yes, I am referring to forums like Warrior Forum.

Okay; this is my opinion based advice but I'd suggest staying away from the Open Source solutions then. Some of those solutions can do great stuff, but they're so genericized to meet every potential need that there's a lot of upfront setup and config. Also the management interface is less than ideal for that number of SKUs out of the box. It's certainly doable, but you're getting into 'the custom work might cost more than buying it' territory. I've only worked with 4-5 'off the shelf' applications, but Magento sounds closest to what you want based on my experience. There might be better ones out there though. Donald Barnes raises a good point too; I directly manage and host all my e-commerce apps, so it's not an issue I've run into. But having a host who understands what your platform needs is an important step too.