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Comment by randfish | Hacker News Reader

I'm the founder of SEOmoz, but I'd say if you're just learning, you can do it for free. Both SEOBook and SEOmoz (as well as other software/tools/community offerings like WebMasterWorld or Raven) are great for when you've settled into SEO as a marketing practice and need the shortcuts those services can help provide in automation, data and expertise.

To start, though, I'd check out http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-op... and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-ways-to-learn-seo.

Best of luck!

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Rank was invited to speak at a dinner at YC on SEO and blew the doors off. The links above are great. You should also check out SEOmoz's Search Engine Ranking Factors list ( http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors ). Description of the methodology for building the list:

"Every two years, SEOmoz surveys top SEO experts in the field worldwide on their opinions of the algorithmic elements that comprise search engine rankings. This year features contributors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, the Ukraine, the Dominican Republic and many more.

Each participant was asked to rate more than 100 search ranking factors along with specific questions about hot issues in the SEO field. This document, representing the collective wisdom of expert practitioners, is, in opinion, one of the most useful resources for SEO practitioners of all varieties, helping to provide transparency into what matters (and doesn’t) for best practices in search engine optimization."

He _should_ change his name to "Rank." ;)

Hehe, funny slip, eh? I wish HN would let edits happen after 15m. I caught that too late!

Disclosure: I'm one of the people listed in the ranking factors report, I've known Rand for many years and I'm an occasional speaker at industry events (I decided to take a couple of years off, am returning 2011).

That said, the SEOmoz guides and resources are awesome, as well as the community in general. Ditto SEObook, and the vast wealth of knowledge in the community at large. I'd say start with SEOmoz, and then if you've got any questions, feel free to ping me an email. I'm not hard to find around the web, and I spend time each week offering advice free of charge to people getting in to the industry. It's my way of paying back those who helped me, many years ago.

Yea, Rand's stuff us all top tier and legit information. The SEOMOZ blog is a really great resource for beginners. Stay away from the YOUMOZ posts though since they are essentially guest posts and usually shamelessly self-promotional.

Also, check out the Matt Cutts videos on youtube. They clear up a lot of stuff that people new to SEO have thrown at them (industry bullsh*+).

Matt Cutts' videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp

Edit: I knew there was more to that account than just Matt, but didn't realize he had his own playlist for questions. I think the link you want is for "Matt's Grab Bag:" http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#grid/user/84...

SEOmoz is indeed fantastic, but I'd also highly recommend lurking in the WebMasterWorld forums. Like HN, WMW has a very simple design, an extremely high signal to noise ratio and very little advertising/spam.

Great to have you here! If I may ask a question - I was trying to search online as to how search engines really use the nofollow tag but could not really find much information.

Would I be right to suggest that although Google publicly says the no follow tag passes no page rank or authority, in reality it does, albeit not to the same level as a follow tag?

holy shit I love hacker news

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