Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1788 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

Synopsis
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.

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

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.

Simple and effective
This is a really easy book to use.
Yes, there are more complex books that go into SEO in greater depth than this but the fact is that if you have a small or medium size business employing less than 10 people, then the really advanced techniques aren't really for you anyway and are really not worth worrying about because you wont have time to implement them, even if you knwo about them.
For people like you, this book is probably all you will need -and it is all very clearly explained in non tecnhical jargon.
I even managed to read it on hols - yes, that's sad I know! But it lends itself to that kind of easy reading because it is explained so clearly in short bite size chunks that take all of about 10 minutes to read and digest.
OK, I found the odd thing listed as free (which now isnt) - and I see another reviewer noticed that too, but given the fast pace of chnage in this area, that cannot really be a serious criticism