The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, by Michael Miller

Sometimes titles are misleading – and this one surely is, even though I am sure it is intentional. While this book starts from the basics of search engine optimization (SEO), it really is a very advanced and excellent overview of this large and complicated topic.

Search engine optimization is fundamental to anyone trying to do some kind of business on the internet. It is about all those various things you can do to make the search engines list your site and its pages high enough in the search results so that your site attracts the people you are targeting. This basically means you want to be on the first page of the Google or Yahoo search results. If you manage to be on the top of the first page – that part of the page that is visible without scrolling – that is even better. The best is, of course, to be numero uno. The number one return usually gets the most clicks!

Consider for a moment why this is so important. It is not because you get more visitors per se, even though you may like to get lots of visitors. Rather it is because if your page is presented to the search engines the right way, the people you get as visitors are exactly the ones you dream of – people who are very likely to become customers. A person searching the net is a person with a need,at the very least a need for information. In many cases the personis looking for an item or a service he or she wants to buy. And they are doing something active – they are searching, trying to find it. This makes them much more attractive for you then people passing over your ad in a newspaper while skipping through the paper on the way to the sports pages!

Good SEO is search engine optimization using techniques that make you highly visible in searches conducted by your specific target group. There is little benefit to getting a top spot for pink elephants if you are trying to sell PCs. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – to my mind, as a person who has worked with marketing for longer than I care to remember, and who works with SEO virtually every day – is a wonderful, highly informative, and well-organized book with a wide enough coverage of the topic to help you achieve this.

So if you want to utilize the best and most cost effective marketing there is on the internet to full advantage, then this is a book you should get! It is very comprehensive- Michael Miller knows what he is talking about! Among others, he answers the following questions:

How do search engines work?
What are search engines looking for?
How do you improve your search ranking?
What will decrease my site ranking?

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization is a book I simply cannot recommend strongly enough. It is well written – actually beautifully written – and clear and comprehensive as well as very, very solid. There is something to learn in every chapter and on each page. Master this book, take the advice given seriously, implement it on your site and work with it, and you will – trust me, I know – get great results!

Links to Complete Idiot’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

Tagged as: book review, excellent, Michael Miller, Search Engine Marketing, SEO