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What two simple words answer almost every SEO question? What common SEO mistakes should you watch out for? How do you create a 301 redirect? Better yet, how can you avoid having to create one? What key trends in search should you be aware of, and how can you adapt to them?

Discover the answers to these questions and others here in more of the best articles and blog posts on the practice of SEO so far this year.

Blog SEO Tips: Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid by Blogsessive

Alex Cristache details five common SEO mistakes bloggers make that cause their sites to fare more poorly than necessary in search engine rankings. Among the mistakes are ignoring (or improper use of) h1, h2 etc. title tags, and viewing SEO as a one-time process rather than an ongoing discipline.

5 Client Pitch Tips That Score Contracts by Search Engine Journal

Dev Basu provides five tips to SEO consultants on how to successfully sell their services, such as asking good questions, focusing on solving client problems, and identifying exactly what the prospective client needs to know (and then not wasting time by telling them everything under the sun). Great tips for SEOs who know their craft but may struggle with business development.

SEO Trends and the Future of SEO by SEO Theory

In this extensive and thoughtful post, Michael Martinez discusses the impact of trends such as personalized search, universal search and social media, and advises SEO professionals to focus on optimizing for query spaces (all the queries and content relevant to a specific topic) in order to capture traffic for long tail keywords.

The Answer To All Your SEO Questions! by Search Engine Land

Jill Whalen exposes the simple two-word answer that applies to nearly any question about SEO, including how quickly Google indexes new pages, what to do if your search position suddenly drops, the benefit of including keywords in URLs and more.

How to do a 301 redirect for a website by Revenue Robot

This post, which belongs in every SEO consultant’s bookmarks on technical topics, explains how to create a 301 redirect for PHP, ASP .Net, Java, ColdFusion and other environments.

6 cures for common SEO mistakes by iMedia Connection

Brian Easter runs down six common SEO mistakes—such as ugly URLs, duplicate content, and a disconnect between SEO and PR—and explains how to correct or avoid them.

Canonical URL Tag - The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps by SEOmoz

Rand Fishkin extols the virtues of and details the process for using the cannonical rel parameter to resolve duplicate content issues with less technical muss and fuss than implementing a 301 redirect. He outlines the tag’s purpose, operation, and treatment by search engines as well as answering common questions. The incredible number of comments this post generated is a testament to the tag’s importance in the SEO toolbag.

Minor Miracles And Major Feats of First-Page Rankings by MediaPost Search Insider

David Berkowitz reports on how critical video is to attaining a first-page ranking on Google, reporting on a study showing that “Videos are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than text pages.” He also quotes a finding from Nate Elliot of Forrester that there are “an average of 4.7 million text pages competing for a place on results pages with an average of just 9.4 text results—giving each text page about a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results.” Every SEO who’s ever achieved this feat should be proud.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2009 (S0 Far): AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Twitter Tips and Tactics, Part 1
Best of 2009 (So Far): Social Media Marketing, Part 2
Best of 2009 (So Far): AdWords Tips and Tactics, Part 2

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Go here to read the rest:
Best of 2009 (So Far): SEO Guidance, Part 2

Tags: 301-redirect, alex-, brian-easter, cristache, david-berkowitz, dev-basu, forrester, future-of-seo, jill-whalen, nate-elliot, query-spaces, rand-fishkin, revenue-robot, seo, seo-theory, seo-toolbag, seo-trends, seomoz, social-media

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 6:51 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.