My Journey To Learn SEO & Web Analytics/Marketing

Have decided to throw myself in to SEO & Web Analytics/Marketing for the next couple of months, so I'll spend at least a few hours each day during the week on the theory and practical of this. Along the way I'll use this blog to track my progress.

First step is I've bought a few domain names for sites I'm interested in creating (seductionhistory.com pickupstyle.com & onlinepickupguide.com).

Next steps:
Decide on a webhosting service.
Create some content for my websites (the toughest step? Ah well, will be about topics I enjoy writing about so should be easy).
Now for the even 'funner' step... looking at and playing around with the data! (I'm serious, I'm actually looking forward to this as I have a degree in mathematics so I'd like to see what figures are coming out of this) So far I've already signed up to Google Analytics & I'll be applying that soon to the sites I already have up and running (I've had aucklandlair.com & newzealandlair.com for a couple of years already. Hmm... I wonder if I can use Google Analytics on my political blog on blogspot? Probably, will have to check that on monday).

Lately I've been reading http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ (a blog by the Analytics Evangelist for Google). If anybody else knows of good resources to learn from I'd be keen to hear about them.


Also I've just came across the concept of pre-sold pages like at http://www.presellpageman.com/presell-page-prices ($100/month & UP!) and http://www.publishyourkeyword.com/ ($20/yr). This to me sounds CRAZY, as you could buy some random relevant domain names yourself and link from there to your main site, so why on earth use this?! (yes I do understand that some of these sites would have a much much better alexa rank than a site you have only just started up, but I'm looking here at the CHEAPEST rates on each of these two websites. And who knows how bad the cheapest ones on offer might be? Perhaps more or less the same quality as a random domain and website you just started up yourself yesterday) Then again this sure sounds like a good way to make a buck for the guys selling the services....

I think for now I shall focus on getting my head around these tools:
http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer , http://www.google.com/analytics/ , http://www.clicktracks.com/products/pro/index.php & http://www.statcounter.com/
Because they are all free & come recommended.