Customer Reviews

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book should be titled "SEM Overview with some SEO sprinkled in".

It contains misinformation, misconceptions, and myths (particularly on CMS and dynamic sites that use query strings). There about 40-50 pages in this book that are worth reading in regards to SEO, and misses out on a lot more. SEM gets a lot of pages (how to run a PPC campaign) and the rest is fluff.

What's missing? To start: no recommendations on real SEO implementation, just that you should do things. Sure, you should write a good Title tag and Meta Description, but how long should they be? What density of keywords? Should you try to get more than one keyword in a Title tag?

Inbound links section is woefully short, 10 pages of real content, 2 pages covering directories, and the directories to submit to is a list five entries long. There are many more that count than these five.

Following the steps in this book can certainly get a site headed in the right direction, but if your market is already competitive in terms of SEO, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and it doesn't really give a structure for understanding how much work is involved (there is a lot of it) or how long it will really take.

All in all, you can get all this and much much more from just a few web sites. If you feel you need to read it on paper, then print the sites out.

The first thing you should read in this book is the author's bio on the back cover. You'll discover that her expertise is freelance business writing, not SEO. That will go a long way in explaining why her book just skims the surface of this complex subject and will provide you with precious little information you can actually use. This book has lots of words, but very little expertise and no depth.

Her discussion of meta tags, title tags, and meta name descriptions, for example, goes no further than explaining what a meta tag looks like. She writes, "Such a tag for the search engine optimization page might look like this:" She then shows us an example...and then moves on to other subjects. There is no in-depth discussion of how to write these critically important tags, how to use or not use keywords or keyword phrases in these tags, no discusses relating to keyword denisty or character length in meta tags or practical example of how sucessful meta tags are written. All you'll be given is an example of what a meta tag looks like. And that's why this book can be described in one word -- shallow.

If you need a bigger clue, this "expert" in SEO has not created any website or blog for her book. Try Googling "SEO Bible" and see what you get. It won't be her book. Sure, there's a page ranking compliments of Amazon.com. But that wasn't her doing. She hasn't even created anything TO optimize. This person probably knows a lot about research and writing -- but knows very little about SEO. Don't be sucked in by the title. This book is not worth it.

I read so many good reviews about this book before I purchased it, as it was praised to be one of the best books out there on the subject of SEO. But I found it to be extremely disappointing. While reading the book I kept on thinking to myself that what the author had very little to say but managed to spread it out on 300 pages, by repeating the same mantras over and over. You could summarize the entire book in 20 well written pages. If this is the SEO bible, I would have preferred the 10 commandments. Did not learn all that much from this book.

Pretty typical SEO book on the whole, same old advice...meta tags, content keywords, linking in and out and all that. In addition, however, this covers the relatively new concepts of using social media for SEO and promotion as well as the sometimes controversial viral marketing.

Shouldn't be called a "bible". Has very few tips you can't find online. Over 100 pages is spent on Pay Per Click, not organic Search Engine Optimization, and PPC is handled much better in other books. I was looking for definitive information like whether your choice of website host provider makes a difference in your SEO, and its not there.

Not worth the money and time unless you have plenty of both.

I can see already that I'm going to get good use out of this book.

Although this books starts off with what would be considered a "history of the web search engine", it goes on to explain every nuance of SEO technology.

I love this book because it does explain everything you need to understand in order to advertise your webpage. Very technical, in plain language. The only thing the book may be lacking is any glitzy business advice as to HOW to get the best results.

So really, the information in this book covers all the ground work to the process of internet advertising. A practical, comprehensive guide to how your webpage gets noticed. I'm glad to have it in my library for reference.

I will admit that my previous SEO experience consists of submitting my website URL to sites offering search engine submission services. Did I mention that this was 10 years ago? And all I got was spam from that. Anyway, I found the "SEO Bible" to be very informative. The book is well-written and easy to understand. I was able to utilize the techniques mentioned to immediately revamp my blog and three websites. There is a visible difference in my site statistics/page rankings when comparing traffic before and after reading the SEO Bible. If you're going to have a blog or website, read this book and learn how to do it right instead of fumbling around in the dark for years like I did!

I have been in SEO/SEM for more than 10 years now. I read almost every SEO books ever published (fortunately not that many), online resources, even some dumb e-book offered through spam into my email address.

Fundamental stuffs with clear explanation and rationales, good for new comers of course, but I found it useful myself to have all collected in a well-structured book. Obviously newer stuffs - gaining popularity recently - like social network and viral marketing took more of my interest.

Best part however is its encouragement to have well written plan and result as part of our SEO strategy.

I was looking for new insight ... unfortunately, this book is NOT the place to get it. This doesn't even go over all the basics .... it doesn't sufficiently cover simple topics such as site architecture, keyword density, keyword placement, unique content development, keyword selection, developing title and other meta tags, proper off-site optimization techniques such as link building, page rank ....

Not really sure what this book was about ... but it sure wasn't a 'bible' for SEO.

If you're really looking for a good book on Search Engine Optimization, this isn't it. Keep looking.

The essence of this book could have been covered in less than 50 pages. Lots of fluff and poorly organized with topics covered in multiple places. Best practices for organic search and PPC were intermingled so those focused on organic search had to pull it apart. Would have been helpful to have an SEO punch list/summary to follow for building a site or product category.

Did have some useful links to SEO tools but the interviews with industry guru's were worthless. Ultimately, the four page checklist we received from our SEO consultant was much more helpful than this entire book.