briggsjustin

I hope this doesn't seem self serving, but seomoz.org has some of the highest quality information you can find on SEO. In addition to that, I'd suggest articles on http://searchengineland.com/ - they offer high quality content and news in the industry. Anything written by Vanessa Fox on SEL is usually great.

Guides like Excel for SEO shows some of the basic stuff we do: http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/

For high level patent / research based SEO, nobody does it better than http://www.seobythesea.com/ (his URLs are ugly, but his content is great)

For specific beliefs on how the algo works, this is a good resource: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

SEOmoz has webinars and a PRO Q&A. Distilled.net also offers videos of our conferences.

As for books, the best I've read are Art of SEO, which is co-written by Rand, and SEO Secrets by Danny Dover (formerly of SEOmoz, now at AT&T) which talks more about the consulting side. The problem with books is that stuff can go out of date quickly. If you're reading a book that talks about PageRank sculpting, for example, it's dated.

Other great sites:

http://www.seobook.com/ - high level opinions and analysis of industry issues

http://www.seroundtable.com/ - recap of industry news and forums

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ - lots of tactical articles

Things I've written for example:

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/how-user-data-may-reorder-...

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/breaking-down-the-mormon-s...

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/building-your-own-scraper-...

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/impact-of-google-instant/

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/replace-yahoo-linkdomain-with-goo...

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guide-to-competitive-backlink-ana...

Hope that helps! :)

This is a debate SEOs have.

Rand wrote an interesting post on the topic this week: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-responsibilities-of-seo-have-...

There is still the point that my work is done through the lens of improving organic search traffic. Google has just changed to include so many factors, it's much closer to just building a great inbound or web strategy. There are also details that are search specific, that it helps having someone on top of those details, because they can have major impacts. So, at least for now, SEO still works as a title, especially when that's the service people know they need.

I find it equally frustrating that there are people out there pitching meta tag optimization as "SEO" and reducing the perceived value of what I do for a living.

And it's still possible to manipulate the search engines, and lots of companies do it, but that's not actual marketing.

As the writer of the story, I guess I should answer this.

I think the acronym "SEO" feels a bit outdated. The problems and strategies involved in SEO are far more involved than it often gets credit for. There are a number of people who do the name a disservice and do bad SEO.

But the type of work I do at Distilled is working on incredibly creative projects.

It might include projects like managing domain consolidation across 3 domains comprising of pages in the millions without allowing for a massive drop in traffic. To solving speed optimization issues, to account for crawl budgets that limit indexation. Or determining IA on large scale sites. Or helping optimize a site running on a 16 year old CMS that won’t switch.

And in the same day, I may switch gears to brainstorm some of the most popular viral content on the internet. Then I'll work with a client on their customer service center problems, because it's leading to reputation issues online.

Then later that week, I'll be on the phone with the CEO of a cool startup talking through strategic business ideas.

I get to help work on strategies that fall well outside the acronym of "SEO" that help lead to the success of some great brands.

As an ex engineering, math, and science fanatic - I love the problems that force me to just sit in front of a whiteboard for 2 days straight until I come out with a solution I think will work best for a client.

I love the complexity of the problems. However, in the industry, I'm more known for "building links" which is the aspect that allows me to be creative. Also, my "hustle" has made me successful at getting my clients coverage. But in link building, you get to work on projects like data mining and analysis on client data to create interesting content. Then I get to take that same content and pitch it to publications. It's such a dynamic process for one content piece to cover everything from brainstorming concepts, to data analysis, to outreach.

So yeah, I love SEO.