SEO Top Follows for the Aspiring Internet Marketer

Achieve SEO Enlightenment by Following the SEO Masters

Knowledge is power. Sometimes knowing who to follow in your industry is a challenge, especially if your industry is Internet marketing and more specifically, SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The folks over at Wildfire Digital have put together seriously one of the coolest infographics ever which provides a great list of whose who from the Digital Marketing/SEO industry to enable you to choose wisely who to follow so as to not waste your valuable time.

Knowing which SEOs to follow is a huge help for serious learners, enabling them to cut through the clutter created by those wannabe, self anointed gurus who give the Internet marketing industry a bad reputation while wasting the reader’s valuable time suggesting questionable SEO software, strategies and services which, in the best case, won’t help, and in the worst case, result in losses from penalties incurred.

Courtesy of: Wildfire Digital

Why this Top SEO Follows Infographic is so Darn Cool

With the vast amount of SEO content available on the Internet and no shortage of self-appointment experts, how is one new to the industry to know:

Who and what information is relevant?
Who is most knowledgeable and trustworthy?
Who is worth following?
What conferences are worth attending based on the roster of speakers?

Aside from the fact that all of the SEO experts depicted in the infographic are characterures and that the characterures are represented in the context of Yu-Gi-Oh! style trading cards similar to the ones that adorned the households of those with Children in the early 2000s, the information it contains is worth it’s weight in gold.

One of the great aspects of this SEO Top follows infographic is that it provides a wealth of information to substantiate why the individuals depicted are worth following including scores for:

Social influence
Social following
Industry interaction
Achievement score

The Top SEO follows infographic also uses symbols to denote:

Authors/Writers
Bloggers
Company Founders
SEO Toolsets
Speakers

The Top SEO Follows infographic even has a special designation (look for *) to denote individuals who offer a great deal to the search industry and a considered by Wildfire Digital to be a crucial follow based on their consistent, valuable content and SEO industry contributions.

Note that many of the top SEOs have more than one symbol/designation, with a few of my favorite SEOs, like Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin and Bruce Clay earning all 5 designations. Aaron, Rand and Bruce are all must-follows for any aspiring or even established SEO in my opinion.

The Who and Why

Each individual person/trading card also has a short synopsis of why that individual’s role in the industry (?) and why (!) that makes that individual worth following in your journey to SEO enlightenment.

For example, for Aaron Wall, the following information is provided:

? – Aaron is a highly respected SE0 veteran, best known for SEO Book – formerly the most popular ebook on SE0 which is now a complete training program and toolset.

! – Aaron is a key figure in the industry and an entertaining follow. His blogging on seobook.com) (and his personal blog) is interesting and diverse, as are his tweets.

If you have not tried any of the SEO Book free tools such as

Then I highly recommend that you head over to seobook.com and sign-up a free account required to access these free tools and begin incorporating them into your SEO workflows.

While you are there, you can sign up for the free “7 Days to SEO Success” mini course which will be delivered to your inbox.

Another great example is Rank Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz.org:

? – Rand is CEO of SE0Moz, a company which started out as an SEO consultancy business and is now provider of the most popular SE° toolset available.

! – Perhaps the strongest advocate of white-hat SEO, Rand is a great source of content marketing tips, :lean SE0 advice and interesting retweets covering all sorts of topics.

Much like SEOBook, SEOmoz.org offers a great set of freemium tools and training materials that can be accessed and used in exchange for signing up for an SEOmoz.org account. This will give the SEO access to the SEOmoz blog and even post on the YouMoz blog, comprised entirely of super high quality user generated content.

Free versions of the following SEO tools are available when signing up for a free SEOmoz account:

Users get a ton of value from the free tools offered by SEOBook and SEOmoz which results in the strong desire to become paid users of these tools. Smart business model, right? These guys didn’t become self-made millionares on business models that don’t work. Maybe a good approach to take for your own business is to look for opportunities to add value before the sale!

The great thing about both toolsets is that they offer a ton of value before requiring you to pay which is the way of the new Internet marketing world and the path to SEO enlightenment.

Follow this list on Twitter

In the comments on the Wildfire Digital blog post where Top SEO Follows infographic was originally published, one of the commentors, Kasey LaRose, created a Twitter list (https://twitter.com/KaseyLaRose/seo-top-trumps) which includes the Top SEO Follows. Thanks to Kasey for making it easy to follow these SEO legends on Twitter.

Summary

We appreciate your time and attention, two of the most valuable assets any of us have, whether we realize it or not. This post is intended to get you on the right track to make sure you don’t spend time following the wrong resources whose only motivation is to sepearte you from your other most important resource, that is your hard-earned cash.

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Now go and continue on your journey to SEO enlightment!