Where to start?

[mike3185]

new pro member. great reports! but with only 8 hours in a day and hundreds of hours of work ahead (610+ site pages,) where to start once i have my reports? thanks

[LosAngelesLimo]

First of all as soon as you get your report,try to fix all errors mentioned asap and then move forward

[EGOL]

I don't know how much SEO has already been done on your site...

... but if I was just starting out I would hire a pro to do a study and recommend on your site.  You explain your goals and your site and they spend an hour or two reviewing your site and your SERPs, then prepare a to-do list that they review with you by phone.

That's better than shooting in the dark.  You get immediately actionable items that should produce ROI.

[KeriMorgret]

A starting place would be the Learn SEO tab on SEOmoz (http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo). That will help explain some of the terms your seeing in your report. The Beginner's Guide to SEO will help you learn about SEO so that you can either do the work yourself, or understand what an SEO pro is telling you.

[Mcarle]

I would spend a few days just reading and absorbing info.

Then take time off and have a few cups of tea.

Then study some more.

More tea....

Then find ONE long tail keyword that you want to work on.

Use the reports to make changes to ONE web page.

(use a little page that is buried & not your home page)

By now your used to drinking tea and waiting, so make some changes and wait for the next crawl (about a week or so) see what those changes did to your SERPS. Use that knowledge to learn how to start slowly changing other pages.  As you read more and learn more all those changes will start to add up.

For very few things in SEP there is no one clear cut simple answer, but there are many theories that seem to evolve every few months to years.  No one thing will be the simple answer, each little thing adds up to create a puzzle.

[mike3185]

Hi Harry ...

So ... Can I assume that errors impact my pages negatively MORE than improvements impact my pages positively?

Thank you

• Mike

[Mcarle]

If he spends hours fixing duplicate content, writing copy & changing all his titles and meta.

Then he learns in a  week that his site structure is that of a drunk octopus and feels it is better to remove several pages to clean up rankings and a better user experience.

That is a lot of wasted time.

[LosAngelesLimo]

Yes,Since these errors (like Duplicate pages,Titles or 404 not founds) are impacting your pages negatively,without correcting them it's to early to talk about improvements.Try fix all errors first and then go to each page individually and start to make your optimization with your researched keywords.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Mike,

First off, if you have a couple hours to spare, I'd start by watching a couple of videos. They are over a year old, but still contain tons of good knowledge about using Moz tools

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/pro-webinar-november-2010-with-danny-dover

http://www.seomoz.org/dp/webinar-february-seomoz-pro-overview

Yes, fixing errors is often considered "low-hanging-fruit" and can sometimes have a quick effect on improving your rankings - but not always, unfortunately.

For beginners, the On-page optimization tool is one of my favorites, because it contains so much knowlegde in a single tool. Pick a keyword, URL, and get to work.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.