Product Description

Influence search engine results and bring targeted traffic to your Web site with an hour a day of search engine optimization (SEO). Drawing on years of experience as successful SEO consultants, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin provide detailed, practical, and often surprisingly simple techniques for improving results. Their simple strategies include setting SEO goals, site optimization, developing and implementing a strategy that might include both free and paid efforts, and tools for monitoring trends, measuring the competition, and tracking results.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193195 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
New to the sometimes confusing and seemingly arcane world of making search engine friendly web sites? A new book offers a systematic, common–sense approach to the art and science of SEO.
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin is written for anyone who has a web site and has yet to embark on the time–consuming process of optimizing the site for search engines. Both authors are experienced SEOs, and the book reflects the systematic approach they′ve developed whenever working with a new client.
Refreshingly, this approach focuses not only on technical tactics, but also on the reasons why SEO is important beyond just achieving high rankings in search engine results—things like business goals, creating appealing marketing messages and designing human–usable web sites.
The book also avoids SEO techniques du jour, the kinds of tactics that are hotly debated in forums and that may or may not have any effect on your overall success. Rather, the book focuses on a solid, fundamental approach using time–tested techniques that work regardless of seemingly arbitrary algorithmic changes by the search engines.
The book is also very well written, using SEO–specific jargon only when necessary and always making sure to introduce new terms in clear English (there′s also an excellent glossary at the end of the book).
The first part of the book focuses on an area many newcomers totally neglect, often to their detriment: laying an effective foundation for your SEO efforts. You need to clarify your goals and really have an understanding of the fundamentals of how search engines work and what types of SEO activities do (and don′t) work before plunging in to your work.
And for anyone that works in an organization, the next key step is to create a strategy that works with your existing marketing, information technology, sales and other groups to make sure your SEO efforts support the overall goals of the entire team. Part two of the book focuses on developing this strategy, and also offers suggestions on working with other groups and selling them on the importance of effective SEO.
Only when this important groundwork has been established should you begin the actual work of keyword selection and optimization, link building and so on.
That′s the focus of part three—developing and implementing a comprehensive SEO plan for your web site. This section takes a common–sense approach breaking the search engine optimization efforts for your web site into a 12–week process, and as the subtitle implies, dedicating an hour a day during this period to a specific goal–based task.
The authors provide useful tools for managing this process, in the form of spreadsheet–based worksheets to help you plan and organize your various tasks. Again, the emphasis is on providing simple but effective tools that someone new to the process can use. That said, these worksheets are truly useful, and you may find them becoming integral parts of your overall SEO toolkit.
Throughout the book the authors offer useful tips as asides. "Pearls of wisdom" tips are obviously tactics gleaned from experience, while "slacker" tips are great for letting you know when you can get away with less work or when you shouldn′t obsess over a certain activity.
There are also longer case studies and expert opinions from other well–known SEOs such as Aaron Wall and Patricia Fusco scattered throughout the book.
In all, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day is an excellent overview of SEO and provides solid advice and guidance for anyone just getting started. The book is also useful if you′ve done SEO in the past but haven′t kept up with the current state of search engines and the kinds of SEO techniques that work today (and want to know what to avoid to stay out of trouble). (SearchEngineWatch.com, July 6th, 2006)

"With straightforward candor, the authors remind everyone SEO isn′t brain surgery. A well–rounded, left– and right–brain approach to successful SEO."
—P.J. Fusco (ClickZ Network, www.clickz.com)

From the Back Cover
Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website

A Step–by–Step Guide

As bracing as a shot of espresso, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day offers brisk advice, bite–sized tasks, and straightforward tools to help you significantly increase visibility for your website on all the major search engines.

In this ultimate do–it–yourself guide, SEO consultants and authors Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin offer many surprisingly simple techniques and insights, including how to:

• Cut through the trendy jargon to find the Eternal Truths of SEO
• Understand SEO essentials like choosing the best keywords and optimizing meta tags
• Steer clear of common SEO mistakes
• Optimize your website for factors search engines care about—and skip the ones they don′t
• Take the plunge with pay–per–click campaigns, link–building methods, and more
• Track and measure results with spreadsheets, customizable reports, and other valuable tools

You′ll also find:

• Essential hints, tips, and techniques for everyone from one–person shops to Fortune 500 companies
• Pearls of Wisdom, such as "You will never really know exactly how Google works"
• Real–world From the Trenches case studies that illustrate successes to learn from and mistakes to avoid

About the Author
Jennifer Grappone is a Los Angeles–based search marketing consultant whose work has resulted in many targeted hits and happy clients in various industries including media, entertainment, software, and non–profit. Starting out as a writer/producer/director of industrial and corporate videos, Jennifer followed the dot–com boom and became a project manager for large–scale web development projects before working exclusively in SEO in 2000. Jennifer advocates a holistic approach to SEO, one that combines elements of good writing, usability, search–friendly site design, and link building. You can often find Jennifer hunched over a laptop in any number of wireless cafes in Northeast LA. Stop by and say hello!

Gradiva Couzin has been working in search marketing since its early days in 1998. Since then, she has improved the search presence of organizations ranging from small businesses working on a shoestring to Fortune 500 companies. Her SEO strategy creates win–win solutions by improving the match between searchers and websites. With a history as a civil engineer and experience in website and database development, Gradiva enjoys the technical side of SEO and loves to facilitate communication between techie and non–techie types. She is also an accomplished artist, painting oil portraits on commission. Gradiva lives and works in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights with her husband and two small children.

Customer Reviews

Simply the best SEO book!
I have been optimising sites for search (with a reasonable degree of success) as part of my occupation as a web developer for nearly four years now. At the time of writing, my site is #1 and #2 (out of more than 8.5 million) in Google for my chosen keyword term. Upon reading this book, I learned how to turn the "basic optimisation" that I do well, into a much more professional optimisation service suitable to be presented to (potential) clients. I own 8 SEO books. If you're starting out, "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies" is a good place to start but I have learned more useful stuff from this book than from the other 7 combined.

Clear, well written, user friendly and delivers the goods
Excellent! This is just the book if you need to make the most of your web site, improve its search rankings, increase its traffic, and generally made the most of what you want it to do. This applies to a single person business, small, medium, large or multinational firm. Whatever your circumstances, commercial, private or charitable, you will make more of your web site if you follow this guide.

Excellently written, in clear English, Search Engine Optimisation - An Hour A Day, will quickly and easily lead you to a greater understanding of how to carry out an SEO Plan. You are given the correct information in order to be able to do this and you are not given anything superfluous, saving you time and allowing you to concentrate on the actions that will get you to where you want to be. You can even choose to concentrate on only those matters which are absolutely essential thereby saving you even more time.

The two authors are greatly experienced in helping real people in every size and type of organisation to maximise their Search Engine rankings and make the most of their web site generally, and this shows in the book. You will find that they speak to you clearly and that you will gather information quickly and easily. They only use technical jargon when necessary and it is thoroughly explained accordingly. This book will suit you whether you are a techie or not.

The book will give you the knowledge that you need and will then supply you with a plan so that you can carry out SEO in an orderly fashion. Much more than this, the book cleverly helps you to identify the results that you want from your web site. The experience that the authors have working with all sizes and shapes of organisations is used to good effect and you will find that there is added value in helping you to get different departments to work together.

You will even find that you can access all the documents you need to carry out your campaign by simply visiting their web site and downloading all the templates that you need, such as To Do Lists, Keyword Spreadsheets and more. It is up to you how much time you spend every day on your project so you can spend less than one hour day if you choose.

You will find that you will have enough knowledge to be able to promote your web site in the way that you want by the time that you have finished reading this book. An easy read, logical, no boring history of the Internet, and a plan that just about anybody could carry out quite easily. Full marks all round!

Effective and motivational
I run a small website and SEO has always been on my list of things to do yet I could never find enough motivation to sit down and actually find out what the whole fuss is about and how to go about being a part of it. This book certainly sorted this out for me once and for all. It's very much like a user-friendly textbook (and one does not come across these very often) which takes you step by step through all the stages of implementing a successful SEO. It's very suitable for people like myself running a small internet business on top of normal 9-5, but it will be equally appropriate for a medium-sized company or a large organization. What I liked the most is the fact that the authors made an effort and broke this seemingly impossible for one person task into small managable chunks or hours and if you just do one bit at a time you know that in the end you're going to achieve what you set out to achieve. Highly recommended and probably one of the best on the market.