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: #3952 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-13
• 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)

Synopsis
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.

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

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.

Practical handholding through the SEO jungle
A cracking introduction to Search Engine Optimisation (or Search Engine Marketing as they would prefer to call it!) Runs through the basics at a very easy pace (slightly slow, but at least it ensures that you've covered all the basics). Lots of practical exercises. For me, as a website designer, it confirmed a lot of suspicions I'd always had, and added some new ideas, but most importantly it gave me a focus for structuring my thinking; so even if you've been around in the web world for a bit it's a definite good buy.

Search Engine Optomisation: an hour a day
I found this a very interesting and focused book. The authors have a very direct and informative style. I enjoyed reading the book and I believe it will be very useful in my SEO campaign. The 'hour a day' really helps to keep the newbie on the right lines when planning a SEO campaign.