Customer Reviews

SEO Warrior

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just finished reading SEO Warrior today. I'm a professional developer (mostly systems engineering in C, python, and java), but I dabble in best-practices web design on my spare time for fun. I picked up a copy of this book as I've heard a lot about "SEO" in the industry, but wasn't sure whether or not it was something real, or just a buzz word.

The author of this book, John I. Jerkovic does an excellent job not only detailing exactly how SEO works, but also why it works, what is good, and what is bad. The book starts out by proving certain SEO elements are legitimate, by using some perl program to perform a large amount of searches for popular keywords, then compare HTML elements of the top ranked sites to see what they have in common (keyword density, title element, meta tags, etc.) In my opinion, this alone was worth the money, as it clearly shows by real-world example, that SEO does work, and proves what elements are more important than others.

The material covered is very thorough (and at times, a bit too wordy), and will leave you with no questions unanswered. The author covers:

- tools to help you test your websites for SEO
- how to use google, yahoo, and bing searches to look for competitors
- how to use google, yahoo, and bing optimizations elements in your HTML pages to promote "organic SEO"
- how to avoid search engine spam
- how the nofollow attribute works
- how to create a sitemap
- how to write a robots.txt file
- where to look for relevant information on SEO
- how to use advertising to your advantage
- how to get money by showing ads on your website
- how to find and detect blackhat SEO
- how to use social media sites (twitter, facebook, etc.) to establish your brand

and a good deal of other topic.

The book is a bit thick, coming in at around 400 pages of content, but has quite a few diagrams illustrating google, yahoo, and bing webmaster tools (among other things), which take up ~5 -> 10% of the total pages. It is a very easy read, not very heavy on coding, but also not too high level.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who does web design themselves, and is interested in making their pages popular, but doesn't really know anything about SEO. The book teaches you everything you'll need to know, and takes you from nothing to everything in a few days.

John Jerkovic's SEO Warrior is immensely valuable, albeit burdened with too much do-it-yourself PHP code. Free toolbars from SEObook, SEOmoz and Chris Pederick implement many of the same features described in the PHP examples. Regardless, his explanation of external ranking factors opens most websites to new levels of optimization and success.

Strong chapters:
* The big picture,
* Internal ranking factors,
* External ranking factors,
* Search engine traps,
* Keyword research (excellent worksheets),
* Competitor research and analysis,
* Content considerations,
* Search engine spam.

Weak chapters:
* Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics,
* Social networking phenomenon,
* Search engine marketing.

Score:
4 stars: Overall
5 stars: Benefits and outcomes can be immediate
5 stars: New information, especially external ranking factors
1 star: Too much do-it-yourself PHP code

Excellent overview of SEO. The author touches on all areas related to SEO, not always in great detail which is understandable as some topics could warrant their own book but he covers enough of each to give you a thorough understanding. Please be advised that all the code script examples are opensource based, php primarily. If you are a ASP.NET, C# app builder they won't help you that much but the general idea is communicated through the examples which you can figure out in your language of choice. A must book for your SEO collection.

As a new entrepreneur in e-commerce, I found this book an excellent and thorough guide to SEO. The book has some very technical information and coding tips combined with some helpful information about marketing. Even though I am not a coder, it was important for me to get a basic understanding of the technical "musts" for my site. This book gave me that understanding and pointed me in the direction of other information to pursue. Very well written and easy to read and understand - even if you're not a techie.

There is a portion of this book available to read on Google books and from my initial take it seemed like it would be an amazing help in my better understating Search Engine Optimization. So I bought it the next day and read it in 2 days. Just powering through it to find the pieces I felt I needed. And as always O'Reilly has published an amazing book written by an amazing author, Mr. Jerkovic.

SEO Warrior's cover bird says it all... Get above the crowd, check it out, and swoop in. But don't swoop in like some fool. Rather plan your attack, calculate your maneuvers and win.

This book provides a fantastic roadmap to maximize the return on your investment of time in SEO.

This is a very heavy book (detailed) on Search Optimization written by John I. Jerkovic, published by O'Reilly. Lots to take in. You cannot read this book in one gulp. You really need to spread it out over time.

As a result of reading "some"? of this book, I've already made some slight changes to my web site. In the old days, you could put in all of these META tags and key words to get the search engines to see your web site. That is no longer entirely true. You'd better rethink that approach; it is much more complex and has become a true science. You have to take specific and concrete steps to ensure that your web site will come up on top of all the thousands of thousands already out there.

SEO Warrior first states how to come up with an easy to remember domain name, no more than two or three words in length. That's simple.

Google may be the top search engine in North America, but not so in other regions of the world. You need to target your audience carefully. This means also that you will have to understand how other search engines work, based on the target audience's location.

Search engines are continually indexing. Some search engines actually contain several billion indexed documents. Web content continues to grow at astronomical rates. This further underlines the importance of determining some optimization strategies to ensure that your business, or other, web sites are the first few at the top of the indexing.

Chapter 3 on Website essentials is very importance. John covers simple things you can do to improve your website, such as using thumbnail photos instead of full-blown photos which increase loading time. Use clear links, make sure your Title tags are carefully thought out, Titles need to be relevant to the page copy, make sure that the words found in the title tag are also found in the page copy, think out the keywords you will use in the Page URL, fully optimize the META tag, use key words in the page copy, review keyword proximity, and so on. You can use Microsoft Word's thesaurus as your keyword research tool. Google provides several keyword-oriented tools that you can use for SEO. These include the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Google Sets, Google Trends and Google Insights for Search. All of these are free and are very useful for obtaining keyword suggestions.

This book, as I said, is a heavy book. There is plenty here to keep you very busy for at least six months. I am glad I have this book. I will make definite use of it.

The author of SEO Warrior, John Jerkovic, did an excellent job in writing this SEO book.

John I. Jerkovic's SEO WARRIOR is for any library strong in web design, teaching about web search engine marketing practices such as Google AdWords, and how to use social networking to increase visibility. From creating sites with SEO to using keyword research to find terms to reach an audience, this is a top pick.

This book by O'Reilly has an accurate title because there is a war on the web...the battle to get placement in search engines.

This very up to date book is your arsenal for either advancing your position or maintaining your ground on the web. O'Reilly books tend to be highly technical and SEO is no exception. About a quarter to a third of the book is simply not accessible to people who don't know how to set up servers or write advanced scripts. I know basic HTML and hand code my websites, but I found discussions of such topics as advanced XML a bit over my head. That's OK, because the rest of the book was great for novices

"SEO Warrior" is a complete guide to getting your page noticed by search engines. It's not just about Google rankings and keywords, thought that's clearly a focus. This book takes a 360 degree approach to Search Engine Optimization. It considers not just the code on your website, but such things as your ISP and host, external rankings by others, social media marketing and link building. I've read other books on SEO and this is the most comprehensive guide I've seen to help a business owner create a complete marketing campaign on the web. More technical readers will be able to copy and paste much of the code and examples directly into their website. Web design novices like me will be able to find tools online to help implement the key portions of the strategies found in the book.

As an example, I never really understood Google Webmaster tools or Google Analytics. I worked with both after reading the book and increased my SEO campaign dramatically. I had the confidence to create such things as a site map and learned how to properly configure my meta information to get the maximum exposure for my website.

A true SEO expert probably knows this information already, so the audience of this book is beginning to intermediate users. In particular, any business owner considering a SEO campaign should read this book to get an overview of the concepts. After reading the book, you'll be empowered to hire a SEO company if necessary. You'll learn the ethical and professional concepts for SEO and learn how to avoid the unethical "black hat" companies.

Pros: Comprehensive guide to all aspects of getting your website noticed
Cons: A bit to technical for people who aren't web designers.

Four out of Five Dogcows.

If you need a way to go from the backs pages of the major search engines - this text can help. If you need your visitors to be active - this is the text. Jerkovic takes the reader into a world of perfection in teaching him/her to improve rankings. The theory, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, is the only way to get it done and Jerkovic makes it possible to do it yourself instead of paying hundreds of dollars periodically to get it done. And, then again, most of these individuals don't guarantee continuous results!!

Jerkovic also introduces the reader to Google AdWords, SEM, and social networking to get the job done. In all, he gives you a total picture of how to keep your site in the forefront of search engines - and yes, Bing is included....

If you are a web developer don't buy this book. The Art of SEO is what you want as a developer and designer. The book is almost worth it for the perl scripts that he offers for free, but they're available on his website, and aren't something you couldn't have picked up on your own. If you're a webmaster or business guru, then this book will take you as far as you can go without having to have specialized knowledge about the internet. It's a very good, general overview of SEO, but it falls short on practical tactics and the the technical aspects of how robots read websites, how new factors are constantly emerging, and how developers should be on the lead edge of defining optimization. It's section on mod_rewrite is very weak indeed.
If you're a web developer and/or designer and this book is new information to you, then you need to get clued up ASAP. This book is a lot of common sense spelled out in detail. It's a great introduction to SEO, but if you're a seasoned web developer there is little in the way of new information. Take my review with a grain of salt. I'm someone who believes books should offer something the internet could never give you. If that's not how you think, then this book may be worth it for you, as it is a good introduction to every aspect of SEO. If you choose to see this book as a central location that collates common sense in one place, then it's more of a 4 or 5 star book.