For about a week now I've been evaluating the Premium Membership offered by SEOmoz. I've already concluded that without a doubt the fee (at least the monthly one) is well worth the content that comes with the membership. However, up until a couple of days ago I had yet to look at the three search engine optimization (SEO) guides available for download.
The first guide I looked at is titled The Professional's Guide to Link Building. I read it first because it's a topic I'm interested in and one in which I know I can improve my skills. True to the title, this link building guide is one of the best I've seen. Some of the techniques I was already familiar with, but even so reading about all of them in a single document prompted many ideas which I jotted down for future efforts. Other tips were completely new to me and they made the guide all the more valuable to me. I give the Professional's Guide to Link Building a thumbs up and recommend it for intermediate level SEOs and link builders.
Next up was The Professional's Keyword Research Guide. Again, this is an area of interest which should make sense since keyword research is a critical component of all SEO efforts. However, my expectation was that there wouldn't be a whole lot of new material here as I consider my keyword research skills to be pretty good. My expectations were met with the guide offering the occasional tidbit of new information, but for the most part what I got out of it is validation of my current techniques. Validation is important not because it necessarily makes you better at what you do, but because it makes you more confident about how you do it. Confidence can win clients.
The final document was The Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly Website. Of the three guides this one is the most basic. SEOs that might find it helpful are those that haven't applied SEO before a site has been launched. In such cases it's important to be aware of site architecture issues and how best to organize content to maximize rankings. There are tactics you can employ before a site launches that are near impossible (because of political, resource, or technical constraints) once a site is live and this guide identifies many of them. While I didn't learn anything new from this guide, I do think it is still well-written and potentially useful to web designers, web developers, and beginner SEOs.
So there you have it. A quick look at the premium membership guides. I understand there's a fourth in the works. If it's like the first three and as advanced as the link building guide, I'm going to be one happy SEO!
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Sure SEOmoz should be providing Advanced-level guides, not intermediate, if they're charging! Do you know what the fourth one will cover?
SEO Ranter,
While I agree that advanced-level guides would be ideal, I also recognize that the SEOmoz folks are running a business. There may be more demand for beginner to intermediate guides and so that is the audience they may be targeting. Also, advanced techniques often become obsolete faster than beginner techniques so they may also be looking at SEO guides that have a long shelf-life because they do take a lot of time to put together.
The next guide is titled Viral Marketing and Linkbait on the Web.
I'm just about to sign up (I think - with this post) for the premium membership. Thanks for the info.