What is the best book or method to learn SEO?

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   carol7777posted 12 years ago

   What is the best book or method to learn SEO?
   
   I still struggle with this and use google tool and still feel I am missing something.

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2. 83

   Rock_njposted 12 years ago

   I found this book to be very useful:  SEO Made Simple: Strategies For Dominating The World's Largest Search Engine by  Michael H. Fleischner.  It is available on Amazon. 
   
   There are a wide variety of SEO books out there and different opinions regarding the ever-changing ways of staying ahead of search engines using SEO, and therefore it is useful to read 2 or 3 books about SEO to get different expert's opinions regarding how to properly implement SEO. 
   
   A second SEO book I read was:  Secrets of SEO Marketing: Strategies on How I learned to Get to the Top of Search Engines and How You Can Too by
   Jimena Cortes.  Also on Amazon.  Not as good as the first one I mentioned, but the author did explore some other areas of SEO, so it was worth reading to obtain a more rounded understanding of SEO.
   
   Overall, I would go for newer SEO books over older ones, and look at the reviews, since SEO changes so quickly.  Getting an SEO book from 2 or 3 years ago is not very helpful.  Try to get one that covers the Google Panda and Penguin updates.

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      Brinafr3shposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      That's good informative info Rock_nj about newer SEO books, thanks.

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      nanderson500posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      This is a great question, Carol. I am interested in knowing this myself. Good answer, Rock nj.

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   Kerry43posted 12 years ago

   I have found that Googling a subject and looking through the first paragraph of the top five articles can be very useful. Look at the word placement and the frequency of use. It is also possible to see, further down the list or a few pages in, where the keywords are used far too much which makes an article very boring and overly promotional.
   
   Enjoy your day:)
   
   Kerry

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4. 66

   Brinafr3shposted 12 years ago

   There's two books I can recommend to you that have worked for my articles and is still working for my articles.
   1. Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Optimization
   2. Search Engine Optimization for Dummies
   
   I've read 4 books about SEO and these two books are my favorites. You can order them at a library or buy online at Barnes and Noble - new or used books.

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   Leslie_Siegelposted 12 years ago

   ME! I can teach you free with no book, no fee, just a few little tricks I use to make my clients and friends and me come up first page google, read my article:
   
   This is a story about an innovative blogger queen who managed to get to the first page of Google and most search engines by blogging and content dropping, plus creating portals and links without any tricks, it's all technology and the engines.
   
   Leslie Siegel blogger writer novelist and sometimes ghost hunter investigator has been blogging since 1984 when her friend, a chemist with the City of Los Angeles CA, thought she'd get a kick out of playing reality based games with his colleagues who also had the internet in their homes at that time.
   
   During the early 1980's, Leslie Siegel had a chance to see the infancy of the Internet up close and personal. She noticed that the first thing they had was a Yellow Pages, then suddenly, just a quickly, a white pages went up electronically. But as for what the Internet is now, it was a far different frontier. Think of the pioneers when they first came out here in covered wagons.
   
   That's what it was like for Leslie Blogger Queen. She actually obtained her name Blogger Queen in the late 2000's when she started her own business of Internet blogging and advertising. She had many different clients of all types and categories and she found out that if she wrote articles, built little blogs and made comments on Internet boards, that maybe enough people would click in, if only but for a second or two, and that raised her client up a notch, until slowly they would come up on the first page of Google or Yahoo.
   
   But how did Leslie Siegel do this? How could she possibly have been on the Internet since 1984? Is that possible. Yes, it is. And she can prove it if you ask her. It was not the Internet of today. It was a small scale group user type set up where you found a number in a computer magazine, sent a money order to the po box, then ran out and bought something called a "genlock" that you attached to your computer.
   
   Blogger Queen had many types, NEC, Commodore, Atari, Mac, you name it. She worked off Word Star, Note Pad, MAC Write, etc... then WordPerfect when that came out, and finally Microsoft Writing and scripting. It was a mad house at that time, but she was able to make all her clients show up in their own categories, and usually on page 1 of most engines.
   
   A good example would be her first client ever, a golf pro from Florida who didn't even own or have a computer or email. So she built him a blog off blogger.com and started making a buzz on boards of AOL and other browsers that were popping up in the late 1990's. It was easy to make people pop into the blog, and portals Blogger Queen set up for them to click. She kept track with stat counters popping up as free downloads, and she did lots of research about the Net and what was trending even before the word became popular. She was so far ahead of the others.
   
   So how? How to get someone to show up without typing their name or company? How does Blogger Queen Leslie Siegel do it. "Well, first you go to Blogger.com and copy and paste their main website HTML from the page source. Then you start to talk about the history of their product or service whether that be acting coach, life coach, golf pro, even an actor up and coming, or a service like a spa or salon, even a female body builder who still garners at least a good 20 hits per day on the blog built for her 3 years ago!"
   
   There's a knack to it

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      CyclingFitnessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      20 hits a day is nothing in the online world! I struggle to see how a writer on here wwith a 79 is attracting sufficient traffic to their own articles to warrant preaching to others on the subject. The internet is full of deceptions

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      Leslie_Siegelposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      CyclingFitness: It's just not my stuff I blog, it's others like this theater in NY! LOOK at how fast it comes up with 3 key words. All I did was write a blog, mirroring their site, then write two articles, then drop all in sites that engines love!!!

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   sandoniaposted 12 years ago

   There are two uses of the term SEO. The most common usage means an attempt to improve your ranking in search engines. This is the type peddled by most engaged in SEO and "search engine marketing." It is unethical. The second and less common usage is more synonymous with making websites "search engine friendly." The idea is to make websites and content easily accessible to search engines. This approach does not attempt to fiddle with the rankings. It is best outlined in Google's own starter guide. This can be found and downloaded freely by searching for "Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide." Follow the advice of this guide and ignore everything else people push.

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      Kerry43posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Excellent answer, Sandonia

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7. 81

   lovebuglenaposted 12 years ago

   Your best bet will probably be to Google the subject. May Google themselves have written about this subject.

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   xstaticposted 12 years ago

   There are some excellent Hubs that deal with SEO ( I think) by successful money earning people such as Cardisa and Cloud Explorer.

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      Barbara Kayposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I agree. Whatever you do, don't pay money. You don't need to. The information you need is all right here on Hubpages. Just type words like traffic, SEO, etc in the search at the top of the page.

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   Sinea Piesposted 12 years ago

   I really like Darren Rowse's book on blogging. "Problogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income".  In fact, his blog has posts all over the place that can help you learn more about SEO.   http://www.Problogger.net
   
   I would also explore Google Adsense's video tutorials. That may be of help as well.

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    Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

    It takes a while, but it's free: I would very much recommend keeping up with searchengineland.com and diving into their SEO tutorials and columns. They generally won't lead you astray with bad or unethical advice, although sometimes they're writing for people with a certain amount of familiarity with SEO.
    
    I've written a basic on-page optimization tutorial called "SEO is Poetry, not Trickery," that outlines a quick method, although I wouldn't get *too* caught up in keywords.
    
    Sandonia is exactly right in saying "the idea is to make websites and content easily accessible to search engines." Another way of looking at is that you're using Google search, keyword logs or other tools to find a common language with the people interested in your content. What words or phrases  do they use to write about and search for your topic? Keyword research tools give you the raw data, then you have to sift through their suggestions and use a writer's instincts to figure out which words and phrases really fit your topic and your intended audience.
    
    (For an example of "doing it wrong," I once made the mistake of using the scientific names of some sea hares I'd seen while beachcombing. My search traffic quickly showed that I was getting graduate students in neuroscience trying to find a supplier of lab animals. Apparently that species was being used in Alzheimer's research! So I had to replace my scientific words with more everyday language in order to attract the search traffic I was really writing for -- people wondering, "what's that big purple slug thing I saw on the beach?" By learning to use keyword research tools, you can figure out the words people *really* use when looking up your topic.)

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    faith_love_hope32posted 12 years ago

    It took me over a year to finally master this and I'm still having trouble with some pages of my website, only because those pages are competitive with Google.  Other pages I rank between pages one and five of Google. 
    
    What I've learned is to pick a good key word or phrase for a title.  The way to pick the best title is this - suppose your writing about "climate change."  Start a Google search for "climate change" but don't hit enter until you've done this....
    
    Key in climate change - as you're getting to the end of the word "change," see what suggestions are popping up as your keying that in.  Go with something within the first few suggestions. 
    
    Then hit enter and compare those key words to other titles in the first page of google.  Try to include your key "word" or key "words" at least 2-3 times in an article.  Using too many keywords can also hurt you with google, so don't over use a key word.  I hope that helps. 

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       faith_love_hope32posted 12 years agoin reply to this

       PS.  I'm getting about 500 page views a day just to one of my blogs and my numbers keep rising.  Must be doing something right!  Unique visitors are in the thousands for my blog and website AND most of my traffic is organic! 

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