griffex
So my org does a lot of international SEO and faces the translation challenge often. I'd say in that particular niche you may have some unique issues, because much of the "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" in the page will have been done by the original writer.

There are some basic rules to follow: make sure the keyword is in headline/page title; use in a subhead or two; keep using the keyword consistently throughout, not just intensely in a few places; use bullet list/tagged visuals to break content up; and use keyword variations with similar meaning.

But trying to help influence these may anger your clients if you're not up front with them first. They put time/effort into the writing and may just want things 1-to-1 without your input. Now I'll agree that's stupid of them, but it's something to consider before hand.

For me, here are the biggest challenges with translations which I would love a translator to help with:
• Everything reads like a legal/government document – we routinely find in translation review that reviewers make tones incredibly formal. But when you're selling on emotion and customer service that tone sucks. Keeping a similar emotion to the original is something we haven't figured out.
• Keywords – just being able to know how something is described differently in a different language can be a challenge. Literal translations sometimes aren't actually used, but if you don't know the industry you may not understand that. Finding a translator that worked in my sector locally and can describe it would be incredibly useful. Also, helping check volumes to see if my piece is even worth translation would be awesome.
• HrefLang – this is code used to keep things clear between language versions. It's not something I'd expect my translator to manage (more on me) but will matter if you want to keep dealing with international SEO.
• Explain the changes or pitfalls – dropping comments in to provide me with cultural context of where something might not work or needs to change would be a huge help

As far as SEO resources go though, you're going to struggle without doing things hands on. A lot of the approaches people describes worked at one time, but just aren't super effective anymore (looking at you "hey, I found this great piece of content on your site" emails). The algorithm is also more flexible now so putting things in context of user intent and the overall set of relevant sites is more important when picking tactics. This is all to say: spend some time reading up, but don't trust all advice in all situations. Get your hands dirty on some projects and you'll start to understand how to work out the kinks.

theeastcoastwest
There's a lot of information on SEO floating around there from a lot of different sources all of whom have very different backgrounds industry wise.

It's pretty generic advice, but I think the best way to get started with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is on a personal project. having a project to focus on can help you identify specific goals. For example, how do I get more monthly visitors to my website, how do I get one specific page to rank higher for one specific keyword, or how do I use internal linking to make certain pages rank better in Google for certain keywords?

If you can identify some of these specific issues it's much easier to wade through the tons of SEO information out there. There's a lot of great free information to read and learn from but I agree that it can be hard to find a good place to start, let alone a good path to take through it all.

Having a personal project by which to gauge the effectiveness of certain SEO actions is invaluable. For example, on-site SEO is a cornerstone of many of the SEO type courses I've seen online. The thing is, on-site SEO is really only majorly influential for websites with thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of pages. Sure, you want to make sure you're on site as solid as possible but for your average blog having your title in an h1 tag properly isn't going to make the difference between ranking on the the fifth page and the first page.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying ignore on site stuff. I'm just saying that you'll be able to see how influential it is, compared to something else like backlinks, with a personal project rather than taking everyone else's word for it.

Learn by doing, seize the day, ETC; all that jazz.

JayMo
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not what you think it is… It's sold as a secret algorithm of gaining top ranks and in Googles and formerly Yahoo's dominance it was relatively easy to do so. However there are two main approaches to this today.
• Learn to think outside of the box in choosing keywords. High competition keywords should never be the target of a beginner, better to opt for longer tail ones and common search phrases.
• Google is King as you know, and has deprecated allot of the older SEO tricks used like inbound links, page rank, keyword stuffing, keyword domain names, etc… The big thing is user engagement after the click. How long does a user stay on your site and what path do they take tells the story of how worthy your rank for a keyword actually is. Googles goal is to serve the customer not the staff, and if the staff does not deliver exactly what the customer needs, the customer does not come back. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is heads the way of 100 percent engagement of the user, what got the user there still plays a small role. If you want to be successful in the SEO game, ONLY select clients that have a great looking site that can engage the customer and convert sales.

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