The Art of SEO: Book Review And Critique
TechsPlace | The Art of SEO is an SEO book for all skill levels that was written by Eric Enge (Stone Temple Consulting), Stephan Spencer (Netconcepts), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz) and Jessie C. Stricchiola (Alchemist Media), who are all experts in the SEO Digital Marketing field.
Who Should Read This Book?
Anyone can benefit from The Art of SEO. This book starts with most basic SEO principles that would be needed by those just beginning to learn SEO. It’s also a great review for those people with a medium level of SEO knowledge. Even an experienced SEO professional would benefit from the book’s easy review of the fundamentals. I especially enjoyed reading the “The Human Goals of Searching” and “How People Search” pages in Chapter One prior to being getting into “Determining Searcher Intent and Delivering Relevant, Fresh Content” in Chapter Two.
Since the book attempts to provide valuable information for readers of all SEO skill levels, anyone can read this book and benefit from it. As a senior SEO executive, I did really enjoy Chapter Fourteen called “An Evolving Art Form: The Future of SEO” while students hoping to be introduced to technical SEO, keyword research, and link building are sure to like chapters five through seven.
What type of tips does it offer?
I frequently folded page corners when I saw a tip or a bookmark-able resource as a reminder to go back to. I did nearly 30 of these! Sections that I recommend re-reading are: “Optimizing for Vertical Search” and the “Tracking Results and Measuring Success,” a chapter that offers a good introduction to SEO Analytics. I also really liked the tip in Chapter ten that addressed pages not getting search traffic in a particular period of time yet are crawled by search spiders, which was a topic that Stephan would likely talk about at a search marketing conference.
Is this book worth my time?
It must be a challenge to write an SEO Book with three authors. While there are a lot of SEO books written today, only a few of them hold up over a long period to time with regard to the staying power of its tips and the facts presented in its content. It’s not that most of these books aren’t good; rather, it’s the result of the industry changing and transforming very quickly that these books don’t always hold up over time. The advancements and the speedy pace of change in the industry have caused the need to create and articulate “core” best practices in SEO. In my opinion, this is what the authors have so successfully accomplished in this book. The Art of SEO is a great read for anyone on any level who is interested in improving their knowledge of SEO. It merits your time. You should read it thoroughly.