Where do I start? A little overwhelmed - Really appreciate any help.

[JFritton]

Hello everyone,

I was hoping to be able to get some advice if at all possible.  I'm know there's some really skilled people on these forums.   I'm not sure of the etiquette of posting links so if it's crossing the line to post the link of the site I'm working on please let me know.

I was just hired as the Director of Digital Marketing for a decent sized company.  I have a lot of experience with PPC, media buys and digital integration but unfortunately I'm a noob with SEO.

I'm trying to learn as quickly as possible, and I'm reading everything I can (including everything I can find from Rand)

The issue is that I have to start somewhere but there's so much that needs to be done that I'm getting a bit lost.  We used to have 3 separate sites that ranked really well for our main keywords on Google, but with the growth of our company we consolidated the different market sites into one main one and 301'd the older ones.  In doing so we lost nearly all of our search rankings.  Our current site is:

Http://www.GoldMaxUSA.com/

Does anyone have any advice on where to dive in here?  I'm currently paying a ton each month for traffic through search PPC and contextual display, along with a bunch of geographically targeted brand awareness display campaigns, and I really need to show some progress on our organic search.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[mytouchoftech]

Start with On-Page optimization - IE get your keywords into your content.  Then I would just start reading SEO blogs until you have enough understanding of what's going on to branch out from there.

[JFritton]

Thanks Andrew.  We are working on making sure we have enough keywords in the content.  We are probably going to have to do a full revision on the site itself.

I appreciate it!

[SteveOllington]

My recommendation would be to do whatever you can to get as much experience as possible by submersing yourself in with anybody there who deals with the SEO, and get the theory by reading, spending time on here, and doing an SEO course such as MarketMotive, SearchEngineCollege, or Quirk... they're three of the decent ones, and it's kind of like having interactive books with deadlines, coursework and tests to ensure you're doing things right. They're kept nicely up to date too

Try these:

http://www.marketmotive.com/internet-marketing-training-and-certification-signup?top=how&topic=SEO

http://www.searchenginecollege.com/certified-search-engine-optimizer/

http://www.quirk.biz/courses/course/seo?utm_expid=47245799-5&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quirk.biz%2Fcourses%2Fhome

And get these:

http://www.artofseobook.com/

http://www.dannydover.com/lp/seo-secrets.html

[JFritton]

That's perfect! Thanks Steve,  I'll check them out today.

[TheGrid]

Always start with Keyword research. Since you have experience with PPC this should be no problem. Then move on to keyword targeting and selection. Once you have your targets mapped. Make a plan for how you implement them once you are set. Begin changing and updating yout title tags, h1, body copy and meta descriptions.

Then, start looking at website architecture, how the site looks to google etc.

You will also want to make sure you have measurement coding in place. Analytics (with goals) Webmaster tools and an xml sitemap.

If the company has very local targeting you will want to do a google places clam and verification

[JFritton]

Thanks Kynduvme,

I have our priority keywords mapped out included a large volume of long tail.  We are currently using Analytics and I've been able to get a good insight into how our customers are using the site.  We are in the process of adding new features to increase visitor usage metrics (Galleries of notable purchases, click through tutorials, etc).

Our on site meta is pretty bad, and needs to be redone.  I've been waiting until our new features and revisions are up to change that however.  We have a few hundred locations now and I've been making sure they're verified with Google Places.   We've been seeing a lot of traffic through that.

I really appreciate all the advice.