Hey folks Austin here and it’s time for another Weekly SEO Recap (That Worked As Planned Edition).

What happens if you Google SEO? You get all the latest SEO articles Google thinks are relevant to your search. But are they relevant to you? Let me be the judge of that and help you cut to the chase.

SEO Teaching: Should SEO Be Taught at Universities?

By: Carla Dawson

Now this is quite a relevant topic.  SEO has been around for a number of years but about the only way to get into it is to study it yourself, find a guru website to teach you, or to find a mentor.  Recently for-profit Universities have started teaching SEO or offering Masters in Internet Marketing degrees, but so far the topic has been staying out of major universities.  If SEO was to be adopted into schools of higher learning and even have full-fledged degree holders Carla Dawson has a few ideas, tips and stories from those with first hand experience.

Pros:

– Lots of Pros and Cons discussed

– Personal experiences and Data

Cons:
– A tad long…but interesting.

Overall: Read It!

5 Ways Google is Changing SEO

By: Jayson Demers

SEO a few years ago was viewed as some sort of Dark Art full with black hat tricks and secret tactics to manipulate website rankings on Google.  Today SEO has changed completely into a new form of essential marketing for businesses.  Jayson Demers explains to business entrepreneurs the changes to the industry and more specifically how Google has changed the industry.  The key takeaways from this is that SEO is more about building brand authority and building links for referral traffic instead of a focus on manipulating search results.  For SEO professionals in the industry for awhile there is nothing new here, but we should focus our attention on building avenues for referral traffic and stop caring about our stupid SERP rankings.

Pros:

– Refocus on Links for Referral Traffic not Ranking

– Good intro article for entrepreneurs

Cons:
– New take on same old thing

Overall: Skim It

Pigeon Rolled Back? Law Firm Study Says Yes

By: Conrad Saam

Pigeon made quite the splash when it rolled out not that long ago, and many local businesses found their traffic dropping.  But Conrad Saam has put the numbers together and says Pigeon is being rolled back!  That’s right Google might be easing up on the effects Pigeon left on the local search results page.  Conrad does a lot of comparisons in traffic data before and after Pigeon first rolled out, and gives us a wide 57 week breakdown in the traffic numbers.  If Google is rolling back Pigeon than I think we have a lot to be happy about.

Pros:

– Refocus on Links for Referral Traffic not Ranking

– Good intro article for entrepreneurs

Cons:
– New take on same old thing

Overall: Read It