Search Engine Optimization (SEO) How to Optimize Your Website for Internet Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live, AOL, Ask, AltaVista, Fast, GigaBlast, Snap, Looksmart and Others)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Samuel Blankson Our price £24.99 New from £24.58 Used from £46.79 Pages: 240 (Hardcover) ISBN: 1905789076 Pub: Blankson Enterprises Limited Pub date: 2008-04-28 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 215988

Reader Reviews:

A good guide for someone unfamiliar with the subject (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is a good starter guide to the various mechanisms of Internet marketing and Search Engine Optimisation (i.e. in rough English, how to get more people to click your links and earn some money in the process!)

The mechanisms by which this can be achieved are explained clearly enough, so a neophyte like me could understand the concepts. Blankson provides useful links at every juncture and guides the user through the processes without bombarding him or her with too much stuff. I learned a few new things. For starters, I had no idea how useful a sitemap is for search engine indexing, nor did I know how easy such a map is to generate, if you use the correct tools and XML. The use of keywords for searches is also advice I will keep on mind if I market products online in future.

I was also interested by the chapter on social marketing, via blogs, video clips and commentary. I vaguely knew about RSS feeds, but didn't realise that they were designed to be syndicated on other websites and that links back to your websites could be contained therein. I have a blog myself which is a mixture of personal items, current affairs analysis and embedded clips. While syndication is not an option I would consider now, it was definitely worth looking at all the possibilities.

The use of certain mediums to copyright work was another suggestion I was not familiar with and could use, as well as the suggestions of banners and e-zines.

Regarding BBS and message board linking, Blankson is careful to note the caveats of just barging in and posting spam, i.e. links to your website. I suspect that even with engagement with the topic through posting, spamming posts may well still get deleted by the moderators, but it would be unfair not to say that the reader is duly warned about this. At all stages when specifying methods unpopular with or banned by search engine, the author includes a warning note. I would quibble with an inconsistency here: sometimes the warning note appears before the technique in question and sometimes afterwards, which can be confusing. A good editor would sort that out and correct the occasional typos and spelling errors that occur and which could easily be cleared up with a quick proofing.

Apart from the typos, I would also have liked some more detailed explanations at some points, such as when discussing the link farm, as I felt none the wiser about link farms at the end of the paragraph as when I'd started. But given this seems an expensive and non-recommended practice, perhaps is the aim is to dissuade the amateur from using same - though this should be more clearly specified.

In summary - some editing issues but in general a good guide for breaking down the concepts involving optimisation and marketing.

Terrible waste of money (1/1 people found this helpful)

I purchased this book after reading all of the reviews and am sorely disappointed. Very basic SEO guidelines and some decidedly black hat techniques frowned upon in the industry.
Don't waste your money. The About The Author section of this book lists Samuel Blankson as "reader, author, poet, songwriter, photographer, athlete, programmer, traveler, researcher, securities trader". Jack of all trades, certainly not master of this one.
Try Search Engine Optimization An Hour a Day by Grappone and Couzin for a comprehensive guide to SEO.

Waste of money, theres better books on SEO (0/1 people found this helpful)

I have no idea why this book gets such high reviews. For the price its a complete waste of money.

Only a quarter of the book seems to deal with SEO and not very well, the rest deals with marketing - affiliate, social networking... If you are looking for a book on how to tweak your site then this isn't helpfull at all.

This was one of two books I bought on SEO the other Get to the Top on Google: Tips and Techniques to Get Your Site to the Top of Google and Stay There was a lot cheaper and far better.

Don't buy.... learn from my mistake! (11/15 people found this helpful)

Please don't buy this book before checking

1. That you are happy with this author's credentials.
2. That you are happy that the other reviews on this site are genuinely unbiased (I find the best way to do this is to check that the reviewers have reviewed a range of authors/products from different publishers).

I did neither before I bought the book. After reading the first few pages I was slightly worried about the content... it seemed so basic and had very few real examples to illustrate points.. just mostly waffle. After another few pages I was becoming alarmed as it suggests practices such as setting up a link farm (a practice which most SEO authors suggest is at best likely to be detrimental to your rankings... and at worst will get you blacklisted!) and keyword stuffing (a very outdated approach).

This was when I decided I had better check the author's credentials!! He has written other such books as "Guide to IT contracting", "How to win at online roulette", "The practical guide to total financial freedom". Hardly a list which inspires you to believe this author is an expert in SEO!

If you have already read this book and implemented any of the suggested practices I strongly recommend that you read other books on the subject urgently as you are in real danger of doing more harm than good.

I could not believe that my opinion of the book was so out of line with so many other reviewers. However I have now gone through the reviews on this site which I recommend that anyone else thinking of buying the book does too! The vast majority of reviews are from people who have only recommended Samuel Blankson's books! I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Please don't make the same mistake I did!

"SEO - HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEB SITE FOR INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES" (1/2 people found this helpful)

An amazing book, so detail written, yet so easy to understand. Samuel Blankson wrote this book for everyone from beginners to experts to follow. If you read this book, he will have you up and running with time to spare. He shows you all the ins and outs of marketing and advertising your web site to be the best. A must have book!

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