Which 2 SEO books would you buy?

[Mathew]

Hi All,

Just wondeing if you were going to buy as a gift for somone 2 books about SEO what would you recommend

Thanks
Mat

 

[maxh]

I started on

SEO for Dummies

and

How to get to the top of Google and stay there.

Both good intro's to nuts and bolts SEO.

 

[JMRidley]

Search Engine Optimisation - An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin - I'm working my way through this now and think it's great. Particularly like the templates (available free on their website) and the really structured approach.

 

[trebor8]

The Art of SEO - only one I've read from front to back

 

[darren atkinson]

I wouldn't recommend any SEO books to be honest, they will contain nothing that you can't find off a decent blog.

Check out the SEOMoz beginners guide, alternatively why not pay for a subscription to SEOBook.com, both will be far more valuable than a book in the longer term.

 

[rendy]

"The Art of SEO" is very good, I'd recommend that for sure.

 

[kitson]

"The Art of SEO" is very good, I'd recommend that for sure.

I agree.I have read the book.It is really a good book.

 

[webgeek]

Ferris - 4 hour work week
Halligan|Shah - Inbound marketing

They can work on the inbound marketing by knowing how to outsource the SEO. No one in UK can manually compete with a team of offshore SEO VA's equipped with the right tools.

 

[seowise]

1. http://static.googleusercontent.com.../search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

2. http://www.seoinpractice.com/

Luckily, both are free

 

[ZboMotor]

The Danny Dover (of SEOmoz), book is good. But tbh, I'd spend time reading blogs rather than investing in lots of books.

If you were to get a second book rather than SEO, I'd strongly recommend the Avanish Kaushik analytics books - they are massively insightful.

 

[JD@fifty6]

I'd like to throw a curveball in here and suggest something like 'The New Rules of Marketing & PR' by David Meerman Scott. No, it's not a traditional SEO book, but everything it contains will lead to good SEO by concentrating on what good SEO is about - great content.

Even if you don't read it for the SEO benefits, I'd recommend it - and that's coming from someone who didn't learn much 'new' out of it because it's my industry.

 

[The Web Guy]

Get into bed with Google by John Smith is a great little book and you can grab it at amazon also as a kindle version.
There's a guy on youtube producing amazing seo videos.
Not sure if i can put an url here as i'm below 15 posts!

 

[jsmichael6]

Definately the The art of seo - By Rand Fishkin

 

[StokedSEO]

Never ever read an SEO "book" in my whole life. There is so much great, up to date information available on the net I can't see why you'd want a book TBH.

 

[kitson]

The Danny Dover (of SEOmoz), book is good. But tbh, I'd spend time reading blogs rather than investing in lots of books.

If you were to get a second book rather than SEO, I'd strongly recommend the Avanish Kaushik analytics books - they are massively insightful.

The Danny Dover is a good book.I am reading it these days.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

The beauty of books is that they tend to start at a level the user feels happy with and then teaches you in the correct order or at least in a structured order

Whilst I dare say you will learn more modern thinking in a blog, you also spend hours looking and then applying this knowledge to your site without consideration to the structure of the site, after all you would not start a school child on calculus afer skipping over algerbra, trig or even adding and subtraction, you build up to a level of knowledge

This makes me wonder about some of the comments here where they say they have never read a book on the subject but relly on blogs, how good is their understanding of the basics if they have jumped in at the deep end, maybe they are just far cleverer that the rest

Further books are their for near instant recall which I don't think you will get from blogs

 

[Mathew]

The beauty of books is that they tend to start at a level the user feels happy with and then teaches you in the correct order or at least in a structured order

Whilst I dare say you will learn more modern thinking in a blog, you also spend hours looking and then applying this knowledge to your site without consideration to the structure of the site, after all you would not start a school child on calculus afer skipping over algerbra, trig or even adding and subtraction, you build up to a level of knowledge

This makes me wonder about some of the comments here where they say they have never read a book on the subject but relly on blogs, how good is their understanding of the basics if they have jumped in at the deep end, maybe they are just far cleverer that the rest

Further books are their for near instant recall which I don't think you will get from blogs

Exactly!!!!

 

[jsmichael6]

I bought 'The art of Seo' by Rand fishkin.

 

[ChrisSmithUK]

The beauty of books is that they tend to start at a level the user feels happy with and then teaches you in the correct order or at least in a structured order

Whilst I dare say you will learn more modern thinking in a blog, you also spend hours looking and then applying this knowledge to your site without consideration to the structure of the site, after all you would not start a school child on calculus afer skipping over algerbra, trig or even adding and subtraction, you build up to a level of knowledge

This makes me wonder about some of the comments here where they say they have never read a book on the subject but relly on blogs, how good is their understanding of the basics if they have jumped in at the deep end, maybe they are just far cleverer that the rest

Further books are their for near instant recall which I don't think you will get from blogs

There is a wonderful little function you can use in most browsers called bookmarks, not quite as satisfying as folding over the corner of the page, I'll give you that one.

The only thing about books, is that they take a while to get published. If you are unlucky enough to be slapped by a Panda that jumps out on you, for example, the chances on recovering from that are unlikely to be found from a book which has been in the pipeline for at least a few months, first.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

The only thing about books, is that they take a while to get published. If you are unlucky enough to be slapped by a Panda that jumps out on you, for example, the chances on recovering from that are unlikely to be found from a book which has been in the pipeline for at least a few months, first.

Get the basics right and the Panda might actually benefit you. The 'new' techniques are generally quick fixes or attempts to play the system which are the very things that Pandas are after... Most of my SEO effort goes on basic techniques that I've been doing for years and none of our money sites have had any negative effects due to Panda.

 

[ChrisSmithUK]

Get the basics right and the Panda might actually benefit you. The 'new' techniques are generally quick fixes or attempts to play the system which are the very things that Pandas are after... Most of my SEO effort goes on basic techniques that I've been doing for years and none of our money sites have had any negative effects due to Panda.

A little off-topic there, Rick... Just saying these books take a while to publish and are not always up to date. I could have used any of the well known updates in Google to make this point, Panda or otherwise.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

A little off-topic there, Rick... Just saying these books take a while to publish and are not always up to date. I could have used any of the well known updates in Google to make this point, Panda or otherwise.

On Topic, though I perhaps wasn't clear on my point. The books mentioned all go into the basics, and this information is pretty much timeless...

Oh and I'm not Rick...

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Definitely "The Art of SEO" is worth reading, far more info than some blog posts about the latest gimmicks and tricks.

If you make use of the stuff in this book you won't have to worry about google updates and algorithm changes as it isn't about tricking Google into a quick but short term ranking gain.

 

[ChrisSmithUK]

On Topic, though I perhaps wasn't clear on my point. The books mentioned all go into the basics, and this information is pretty much timeless...

Oh and I'm not Rick...

Fair enough, perhaps I missed the point about the books being about timeless, basic SEO, thought the thread was regarding all manner of SEO books, including some of the more advanced considerations.

And sorry I got your name wrong - Noob mistake perhaps, assuming the name of the person in the profile was actually the person posting?

You make a good point though, good quality SEO and online marketing does withstand the test of time, Rick.. or whatever your name is... ;-)