Product Description

There's having a website and there's having a website that works. It's all very well having a Flash intro and lots of features and functionality that can 'wow' your audience on every single page. But what if they can't find you? What if you're not visible on the search engines, and on Google in particular? Making your site 'Google Friendly' or employing Search Engine Optimisation techniques (or SEO as it's known in the trade) at your earliest convenience, should be a priority - if you don't rank on those results you may as well not have a website at all - it's that serious...But how do you get yourself started so you can make the most of your online presence? Let "Get into Bed with Google" help.Dip in and dip out, read it from start to finish - it really doesn't matter. The 52 brilliant ideas contained within are canny and quick fixes that should result in immediate benefits to your site; even implementing just a handful of ideas will improve your website rankings and will help you realise your ambitions and the ambitions of your company. "Get into Bed with Google" will help readers get their websites at the top of search results pages so their customers can find them easily and quickly, which in Google terms is the gold at the end of the rainbow. It is simply brilliant.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3606 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-21
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
... you should try the advice in this book. --Mac User, January 2008

About the Author
Jon Smith was part of the start-up team for Amazon.co.uk, Kitbag.com and The Florist Exchange. As a consultant for the venture capital firm Chase Episode 1, he was tasked with improving and researching business plans submitted by companies looking for investment. Since 2003 Jon has been managing director of Inpress, an organisation set up to provide sales, marketing and technical support to independent publishers for which he received three years funding from Arts Council England. Jon is also the author of Smarter business start-ups and Web sites that work both available in the 52 Brilliant Ideas series.

Customer Reviews

Bedding Google Is A Good Idea!!
Get into bed with google is a really simple to read book that has really short chapters to digest the all important information and task of getting friendly with google, I highly recommend it from the author Jon Smith who displays a no nonsense approach to the aspects of search engine optimization and the rights and wrongs of how to get better results with Google and actually have them index your website.

If you follow the simple strategies and techniques offered in this handy pocket sized book, your website will be better equipped than most other websites and give you some definitive pointers to build and improve any website you create.

Great read and useful too.

Worth a Read
This book contains much good advice and tips on how to improve and optimise your website. I like the fact he recommends you steer clear of unethical approaches such as hidden text, and that you should stick to simple html with a lot of text-based content that can be easily read. The other big factor in this book is it's compact size and straightforward short chapters, meaning you can concentrate on implementing one recommendation at a time.

On the downside, some of the information is very outdated, considering the recent publication of the book itself. For starters, the Overture keyword search helper is overused and therefore very hard to even access nowadays, if at all, and is being phased out. Secondly, some of the items recommended such as Wordtracker are far from free and therefore only relevant for large businesses rather than the one-man band web developers likely to be attracted to a book like this.

All in all, 4 out of 5. Good and worth a read, you will most probably get your money back and more through increased exposure of your website using the suggestions within.

Clear, simple, and very quick to read
I've been building websites since 1994 and things have changed hugely since then - especially with the arrival of Google in the late '90s. This book presents 52 short and sweet tips for improving your ranking on search engines (not just on Google, though that's where the book places most of its emphasis).

It's a small book (about 6 inches by 4.5 inches) and a short one (just 174 pages of main content), but that's definitely a positive in my view. The advice is very distilled and easily readable. We cut straight to the chase. Each of the 52 general pointers concludes with "Here's an idea for you": a simple practical tip you can immediately try.

I knew almost all the tips already but hadn't bothered to do anything about them. The virtue of this book is that it served as a wake-up call to action. Reading through it in a couple of days, I finally felt motivated to optimize my site. I have no idea whether I'll see much benefit, but if you make a significant proportion of your income from the Web, it certainly can't hurt. Even a small improvement would pay for the cost of the book, and the time invested, many times over.

One thing worth pointing out: I felt the book was geared mainly towards websites selling products or promoting small businesses. Though much of the advice is general, the book doesn't really tell you how to optimize a content-rich, newspaper- or magazine-like site (or blog) that makes its money from advertising. That's probably a whole separate 52-idea book! If your site falls into that category (information-based rather than product-based), with dozens or hundreds of separate pages, you'll find the ideas here helpful but less relevant. If your site has just a few pages and it's promoting, say, a local florist or building business, I think you'll find it very helpful.