Which SEO Ebook Would You Buy? Options

[guide]

Hi All!

At the risk of promoting someone's products, I want to know :

If you were only going to buy ONE SEO Ebook, which one would you buy?

From my experience and reading about other's, most ebooks just rehash the same old info. I want to buy only ONE, covering as much and in detail including "how to" etc of SEO and getting your site to the top.

Been trying to get proper reviews on the Net, but most reviews are biased since they almost all sell the ebook as an affiliate.

I have come across two that seem to come up everywhere :

Rankings Revealed and Winning the Search Engine Wars. There may be others I dnt list here?

If you were going to buy just one... which one will it be?

I ask you guys, you are the experts....

PS: I know if i just read through the forums i will learn everything i need to know... but i want to buy just ONE SEO ebook...

[peter_d]

Depends on your level, Stephan.

The field changes so quickly that many courses will be out of date by the time they are written, so you want a book with regular updates. "Winning the Search Engine Wars" is quite good in that respect. I don't know anything about "Rankings Revealed".

I understand a few of these books offer money back guarantees? Why not try them and keep the one you like best?

Beyond that, the forums are a great place to learn. I don't have any SEO books on my shelves, although I do have quite a few on marketing.

[guide]

Hi Peter!

Thanks for the reply! Iv'e been on the Net for 4 years, for the last year full time, so I'm past the VERY basics, but there are still terms and techniques that get mentioned on forums and websites that I am unfamiliar with still : esp ito "how to" etc...

Rankings Revealed is by Sean Burns of webmastersreference.com

I know it was also updated recently with all the changes at google and yahoo...

I believe Wining The Search Engines War is updated all the time? I'm not sure...

I gues what I am asking here is "which seo ebook you would consider to be your BIBLE" ie which one would you buy if you could buy only one.... irrespective of your level of expertise?

thanx peter....

[Black_Knight]

There's no doubt in my mind that if you were going to choose just one book, then it should be "Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide" by Mike Grehan.

However, it does depend on what you want to acheive. If you simply intend to tinker with your rankings as a webmaster, then "Winning the Search Engine War" is a good book with many instantly applicable ideas. Trouble is, there are few of them that you couldn't find out for yourself.

Mike Grehan went and actually interviewed the people who researched and wrote the actual search algorithms. As the quote goes: they didn't tell him the algorithm, but they talked happily, and in detail, about the ingredients. You'll be very unlikely to find this info anywhere else.

[peter_d]

I can also vouch for "Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide" by Mike Grehan. <shameless url drop> I interviewed Mike here.

Apparently there's a new book along shortly?

[guide]

Thanks Peter and Ammon!

EXACTLY what I was looking for. What the PRO's read....

Ammon.. I DEFINITELY dont just want to "tinker" so if "Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide" is what you guys read then I'm looking into it straight away.

Definitely dont just want to learn the normal run of the mill stuff. Good solid SEO that works.

Thank you so much for replying... comming from you guys I KNOW that I'm talking to the pro's....

[guide]

PS Peter...

Read your interview with Mark... EXCELLENT!!! I can see I'm on the right track....

Excellent piece....

[Big Bill]

I stayed away from Mike Grehan's book on the basis that it was a book and given the volatility of the optimisation environment by the time a book is researched, pitched, accepted, printed, distributed etc. it's so far out of date it may well be interesting from an academic viewpoint but I doubt it's worth much as a help to successful contemporary optimisation. However since you seem set.....
I'd subscribe to Planet Ocean's newsletter and get their Search Engine bookie, an updateable e-book thrown in, as well though. Arguably you'll have the best of both worlds then.

BB

[Black_Knight]

...given the volatility of the optimisation environment by the time a book is researched, pitched, accepted, printed, distributed etc. it's so far out of date it may well be interesting from an academic viewpoint but I doubt it's worth much as a help to successful contemporary optimisation.

Those are all great and valid points about most books. There are two things that can get around that obvious limitation. The first is the regular updating, which is the method of Planet Ocean. However, the fact remains that with algorithms changing at least to some extent on a monthly basis, the fact is (and any of us who do our own research for long enough can testify to this) sometimes by the time you've collated the info it is already out of date.

SEO moves fast, and in fact so fast that by the time you've seen where it is at, it isn't there any more. You're always getting data a month in arrears, while the changes you make will only take effect a month or two in the future.

Mike Grehan's book takes the other approach, and the one I myself work to. It doesn't just look at what works, it looks at why. It tracks the trajectory of the search algorithms so that you can predict its probable position in a month, or three, or six.

There is no other book I'm aware of that does this. If you ever reconsider your decision, Big Bill, I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that you'll be impressed and glad you did.

[Mike521]

Just jumping in to second Bill's notion about the Planet Ocean book. that book was my first introduction to seo and was a great starting point, from the basics to the specifics, and it's updated monthly.

looking forward to checking out the other recommendations mentioned here

[Big Bill]

Well Mike's obviously taken my criticisms to heart and has taken steps (very promptly, I might add) to amend the situation - there has arrived in my inbox this evening the intelligence that edition two of Mike's book is now available as an ebook with edition three coming hard on its heels.
So download away!

BB

[guide]

Excellent Guys!

Thank you for the feedback. By the sounds of it I should have asked : if you could buy only TWO SEO books which ones would it be?.....

I read Peter D's interview and checked out Mike's Website and it does seem to be what I'm looking for. Will maybe have to buy both... Only thing is... with the South African exchange rate at around $100 a piece... that almost pays the rent down here...

Maybe invest in one this month and work through it and then invest in the other. At least this thread has cleared it to me thank you. I agree with Ammon, I like Mike's approach (gathered from his interview and his website) maybe go with that one first... Get to know the 'mechanics" of the search engines and an understanding of them, then to keep updated and "try" at least to keep up with the CONSTANT changes Planet Ocean's?

It does seem clear from the postings so far at least that these are the two alternatives.

EXCELLENT! Thank you... you guys are a great help...

[seobook]

you can often save money by signing up as an affiliate and selling the product to yourself

[glyn]

You'll only get to the top of the search engines by trial and error, testing and keeping all the info in a little black book and sharing even less of it. Therefore I would not look for a book that tells you how to optimise for the web beceause it will be out of date by the time its printed. The best thing to do would be search this forum and collate some threads.

On books, I'd wholehearteldy recommend "web metrics" by Jim Sterne, or take a look at Jim Novo's website - both these authors (particularly the latter) are looking at the online marketplace from a point of view of measurement/ROI . In fact what I've learnt is that everyone in the marketplace is talking about metrics but the reality is that very few are doing it to any degree of detail or, if they are, they are not able to react and implement metric findings into their online business model so that the benefits can truly be seen.

Get involved....the stuff you can do with an excel spreadsheet!

Glyn.

[jok]

SEO field is so changable that once you get a book it will become old immediately. So to be in top results you need to be online every time, day by day.

[guide]

Hi guys!

Thank you for the feedback! I think my main idea in asking about the ebooks is that the information in there is sorted and systematical.

I agree that you need to be online every day and LEAR LEARN LEARN, but an ebook would give me the basic understanding of the SEO techniques disscussed on the forums. Very often a technique is being talked about that you see mentioned every where but don't know EXACTLY what is or how to use it.

The forums are great and part of the fun is finding the topics that you are looking for, it is however to a large extend "unsorted" and takes you ages to go through all the past topics to "hopefully" find what you are looking for. (even using the search functions are not the best) Yes the main topics are sorted to a degree but often it takes me forever to try and find what I'm looking for and as usual I find myself of on a tangent before I know it...

I think a solid ebook that teaches you the fundamentals of SEO is a valuable tool, that can help you in understanding how the search engines work (basics) and the basic techniques of SEO, some of which holds true whether engines change or not....

Yes the engines changes all the time (don't I know it... :wink: ) but somewhere there should be some solid fundamentals that you can work through systematically or that can be easily referenced.

I think there is value in getting a GOOD SEO ebook to start with and work your way from there? And in most cases (certainly in the ebooks mentioned here) they come with updates.

I haven't bought yet, but it seems that I will have to go for both the Planet Ocean ebook with updates and Mike's ebook.

[Black_Knight]

I'd say those two make for a good combination.