Slashdot Mirror
Search Engine Marketing Kit
John Garrett writes "The Search Engine Marketing Kit is a kit aimed at professional web developers and Search Engine Marketing professionals who are seeking proven strategies and techniques for improving the search performance of websites. In fact anyone who has an interest in how well a website ranks on searches related to the website’s content or target market could benefit from the tips found in this kit." Read the rest of John's review.
The Search Engine Marketing Kit
author
Dan Thies
pages
273
publisher
SitePoint
rating
8
reviewer
John Garrett
ISBN
0-9752402-5-0
summary
A kit on how to optimise and market your website for the search engines.
Dan Thies is a successful search marketing expert who shares in this kit from his years of professional experience. The book is primarily about proven yet reputable techniques to maximize a website’s chances of getting high rankings on searches. High rankings can mean the difference between lots of traffic, and no traffic at all, so for a website that needs traffic to generate business, the worth of good search rankings is invaluable.
The kit discusses techniques for both search engine optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and although the book doesn’t presume a prior familiarity with these subjects it does expect some knowledge of website design and development, at least at a basic level. Search engine optimization (SEO) looks at how a website can be designed and developed to maximize its chances of ranking well in searches, whereas Search Engine Marketing (SEM) looks at paid marketing campaigns in search engines like Google to provide advertising for your website. Both techniques are very complimentary and the kit recognizes the need to address both issues for the most effective marketing outcomes.
The kit combines both timeless and timely wisdom in that some concepts could be out-of-date in 12 months due to the rapidly evolving nature of search, whereas others have stood the test of several years and will probably continue to be sound principles for years to come. Unfortunately it is the very nature of the search industry that no book can be completely relevant for too long, however this kit is certainly a great resource for the present climate.
This “kit” is published by SitePoint, who publish quite a lot of very good material aimed at Web Professionals. The price of the kit is quite high yet SitePoint claim that their kits are more comprehensive than their books, and hence justify the higher price. Having read the kit thoroughly I can say that the kit is well worth the outlay. It represents something of a distillation of years of someone’s professional expertise and experience and therefore contains resources and information that might take years to arrive at by any other means. What I’m trying to say here is that my time is valuable and if Dan is willing to share his best secrets and insights in his kit then I think it’s worth the price! There are several other good books around on the same subject, but this would be the best I’ve come across, of what I’ve read already.
The book comes with a CD-ROM with some very useful resources aimed at professional SEM business. These resources are representative of Dan’s professional expertise and could be very helpful if you are in the business of providing SEM or SEO services to paying clients. The book also discusses software and other tools that can be used for providing SEO and SEM services and again Dan can save tears and wasted money by giving you his clear summary of the best available. (There are lots of resources available on the Web for SEO & SEM, and thankfully Dan has cut through all the hype and spelled out the must-haves very clearly.)
I found that the kit also contains numerous references to resources, both free and paid, that can benefit anyone conducting SEO and SEM for a website. These resources are ones that you might not know exist had you not had the opportunity to appreciate the experience shared by Dan, yet they are resources that can make SEO & SEM more effective and efficient. Again this kind of insight is worth paying for.
The kit is very readable and well set out so it’s not a “heavy” read by any means. I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who works in SEO and SEM, so perhaps my understanding is somewhat biased, however I made so many notes, highlights and tags throughout the book on points that I found very helpful, so I think it certainly has much valuable insight to offer everyone. Its very much a resource in the sense that you will want to refer to the content over and over as you put the techniques into practice and particularly for anyone involved in website design and development this kit should become a frequently referred to desktop reference.
As a professional web developer, providing SEO and SEM services to my clients, I have a reasonable understanding of the search industry. I obtained the kit because I wanted to further develop my understanding of this important area and I found it to be an excellent reference and resource. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the responsibility of getting a website “found” in the search engines. Don’t be discouraged by the relatively high price as the kit still represents very good value for money. My principal advice would be to read it thoroughly, as it contains too many gems to obtain from anything but a careful study. The many tips and techniques are clearly laid out in a logical manner that enables practical application immediately.
John Garrett is a professional web developer based in Sydney Australia. His website is www.softcomweb.biz."
Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Dan Thies is a successful search marketing expert who shares in this kit from his years of professional experience. The book is primarily about proven yet reputable techniques to maximize a website’s chances of getting high rankings on searches. High rankings can mean the difference between lots of traffic, and no traffic at all, so for a website that needs traffic to generate business, the worth of good search rankings is invaluable.
The kit discusses techniques for both search engine optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and although the book doesn’t presume a prior familiarity with these subjects it does expect some knowledge of website design and development, at least at a basic level. Search engine optimization (SEO) looks at how a website can be designed and developed to maximize its chances of ranking well in searches, whereas Search Engine Marketing (SEM) looks at paid marketing campaigns in search engines like Google to provide advertising for your website. Both techniques are very complimentary and the kit recognizes the need to address both issues for the most effective marketing outcomes.
The kit combines both timeless and timely wisdom in that some concepts could be out-of-date in 12 months due to the rapidly evolving nature of search, whereas others have stood the test of several years and will probably continue to be sound principles for years to come. Unfortunately it is the very nature of the search industry that no book can be completely relevant for too long, however this kit is certainly a great resource for the present climate.
This “kit” is published by SitePoint, who publish quite a lot of very good material aimed at Web Professionals. The price of the kit is quite high yet SitePoint claim that their kits are more comprehensive than their books, and hence justify the higher price. Having read the kit thoroughly I can say that the kit is well worth the outlay. It represents something of a distillation of years of someone’s professional expertise and experience and therefore contains resources and information that might take years to arrive at by any other means. What I’m trying to say here is that my time is valuable and if Dan is willing to share his best secrets and insights in his kit then I think it’s worth the price! There are several other good books around on the same subject, but this would be the best I’ve come across, of what I’ve read already.
The book comes with a CD-ROM with some very useful resources aimed at professional SEM business. These resources are representative of Dan’s professional expertise and could be very helpful if you are in the business of providing SEM or SEO services to paying clients. The book also discusses software and other tools that can be used for providing SEO and SEM services and again Dan can save tears and wasted money by giving you his clear summary of the best available. (There are lots of resources available on the Web for SEO & SEM, and thankfully Dan has cut through all the hype and spelled out the must-haves very clearly.)
I found that the kit also contains numerous references to resources, both free and paid, that can benefit anyone conducting SEO and SEM for a website. These resources are ones that you might not know exist had you not had the opportunity to appreciate the experience shared by Dan, yet they are resources that can make SEO & SEM more effective and efficient. Again this kind of insight is worth paying for.
The kit is very readable and well set out so it’s not a “heavy” read by any means. I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who works in SEO and SEM, so perhaps my understanding is somewhat biased, however I made so many notes, highlights and tags throughout the book on points that I found very helpful, so I think it certainly has much valuable insight to offer everyone. Its very much a resource in the sense that you will want to refer to the content over and over as you put the techniques into practice and particularly for anyone involved in website design and development this kit should become a frequently referred to desktop reference.
As a professional web developer, providing SEO and SEM services to my clients, I have a reasonable understanding of the search industry. I obtained the kit because I wanted to further develop my understanding of this important area and I found it to be an excellent reference and resource. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has the responsibility of getting a website “found” in the search engines. Don’t be discouraged by the relatively high price as the kit still represents very good value for money. My principal advice would be to read it thoroughly, as it contains too many gems to obtain from anything but a careful study. The many tips and techniques are clearly laid out in a logical manner that enables practical application immediately.
John Garrett is a professional web developer based in Sydney Australia. His website is www.softcomweb.biz."
Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
These toolkits are very interesting for the "now" but not very valid for the future.
:)
Google and Yahoo and others and their search engine mechanics are always working on these manipulations of the results. My big problem with any "buy my hidden secrets" kits is that once a secret is known by the person being manipulated, it is easier to defend against. Do you seriously believe that the top SEO companies would ever tell you anything that they'd want google to find out?
I have some secrets to great search engine placement:
1. Create worthy content.
2. Spell things correctly.
3. Create worth content.
4. Update it regularly.
5. Keep the same domain name as long as you can. I lost some "valuable" second and third positions by letting domain names expire.
6. Try and figure out what the newest "industry catchphrases" are and make sure you use them, except if you're targeting slashdot readers
7. Create worthy content.
8. If you find a way to get a higher page rank, don't tell anyone. Be happy until the search engines close that venue off. If you really want to be placed at the top, just pay the piper for an advertisement.
If you're chasing a niche market, you can hit the top 10 in 2-3 weeks, generally. If you're chasing a broad market, good luck, you're too late.
When it comes to marketing kits, learn from Taco's posts: don't be duped.
Oh, as long as this guy is getting slashvertising to his website, might as well click on my link. It is only fair!
This review is useless. It's paragraph after paragraph of some unknown web weenie exhalting a $200 "marketing kit". No where does the reviewer actually discuss the content of the book. It's an invaluable reasource for web professionals... yeah, yeah... don't be turned off by it's (never actually stated) price.... yeah, yeah... The author is a SEO genius... Ok, we get it! Now tell us something of substance!
I'm sorry but my astro-turfing, sealth marketing spidey sense is on high alert at the moment. This is neither newsworthy or nerdy. How does a pointless review of unknown book by an unknown publisher get the marquee treatment at one of the most widely read sites on the 'net? And who's this "samzenpus" editor?
Hey, I run a technology business of my own; I understand the need to get the word out. Hell, I've even plugged it here on Slashdot before. But I never try to sneak anything under the radar; if I'm trying to promote something, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Who knows? Maybe some people might actually appreciate being informed about a product or service they'd find valuable. These "Slashvertisements" are getting out of hand.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
If you want people to visit your site, if you want a good search engine ranking, just have a bloody good website or a great company. Google doesn't (or never used to) advertise. Word of mouth is still one of the most powerful forms of advertising, take Maddox (even though I'm not keen) for example. Zero advertising yet it's one of the most popular sites on the internet. Same with a lot of the top sites on the internet, does Slashdot even advertise itself?
C17H21NO4
when is the kit coming out for marketing on slashdot? what's with these adverts?
This whole thing sounds like a spam to me.
sulli
RTFJ.
Is this...not a Beatles article...but it is about...Search Engine Marketing...my head explode.
is posting on slashdot with my website in my sig/next to my name and hoisting some of it's pagerank influence
Check out SEOFAQ.net, it has a HUGE list of techniques on how to really improve your search engine rankings. And it's all free, the way it should be.
In other words how to ruin the net making unrelated articles appear at the top every single search.
It's good to know that at least google try to defeat this kind of scumm. Not because google is "good" or "not evil", but because google knows the value of the site is dependent on how good the results people get. If MSN Search starts to get more good results then google then google would start to loose ground.
For all i know, google is already struggling to get good results, and many times the resuls are quite poor and full of ghost "search engines" and buy now pages. But other times it still is very usefull.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
The way I see it, the best sites and blogs have someone uncovering (or better yet, making) something that's useful or just super cool. People like me see that, vote on it with the Google Toolbar (or any equivalent), and might even link to it when they get the chance, leading to Profit! for the guilty parties.
The best SEO will always be MAQS®*.
*Making A Quality Site that really is worth the hits.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Posted by samzenpus on 12:31 PM December 16th, 2005 would only take a single character move to make it spamzenus. But then again, if they were really trying to spam Slashdot to gain better PR they would have had to include a link.
;)
I guess we shouldn't even trust the SEO spammers to know what they're talking about
Like those Real Estate infomercials, as soon as I read "marketing kit" my interest was lost.
If the author's mojo is really that great he wouldn't need to make money selling his "sectets" to others.
Perhaps they are not exactly strangers ...
Google Bomb.
/. is what happens when geeks talk. get used to it.
this is a new low for slashdot. just from the sound of it, it's no better than that "place tiny classified ads in newspapers for big profit selling my secret" infomercial. i can smell it from here, yuck yuck yuck.
SEO "experts" repeatedly forget that sites should be made for people, not search engines.
Following commonly known good practises and having a great product/content is what people need, having every piece of text and code filtered though "keyword density" tools and SEO kits is simply ridiculous.
Because http://searchenginewatch.com/ can get /.d
Otherwise, SEW is (a) free and (b) makes its daily bread by continually providing up-to-date relevant information. That's great motivation!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
...or advertorial? It just seems unlikely that an editor would link to a page that begins "Search engine marketing is critical to the success of your website marketing." That's not editorial - that's a sales pitch.
/bye karma
PS. Here's my free SEO/SEM advice. Visit seochat.com & webmasterworld.com. Then do a search for "seo forum" and participate in some discussion. Another added benefit - you will not limit yourself to a book that will likely be outdated within a year.
This article should just be removed from Slashdot. Like we really need Slashdot to be promoting the abuse of Google.
Regular SEOs are sleazy too, but they're in the business of helping their customers lie to Google's robots so they tell the search engine to lie to its users about how interesting the customer's web pages are. The main objective of SEO, after all, is to take an uninteresting web page and get the search engines to think it's interesting so the readers will read it.
Most SEOs provide some valuable advice about how to tag your web pages so the robots can find your content, and making sure your content is available as text and not just some flash animation, but that takes about 15 minutes and isn't enough to run a business on, unless they can find customers who want somebody to implement that for them.
A few SEOs are actually in the legitimate business of helping their customers create content that's sufficiently interesting that people actually want to read it, but they still think it's worthwhile marketing themselves as SEOs rather than writers or editors. However, even most SEOs who say that's what they're offering are more likely to focus on tricks, like keeping the content updated at frequencies that the seach engine thinks are likely to be interesting, rather than actually tracking readership, though that's certainly better than running link farms.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Where I live, car dealerships employ the following tactics to get you to ultimatly give them money (buy a car.) *Balloons, flags, etc. *Holding "Special Sales Events" every day of they year, it seems *Shiney trucks with thier hoods propped open with signs that read "S-A-L-E" *Inflateable gorrillas/other animals *Trucks that the bed has been converted into a mobile billboard drive around town *"Get a Free TV with a test drive!" Point is, these are all marketing gimmicks, whose SOLE purpose is to ultimatly get YOUR money. PERIOD. These are just Internet GIMMICKS. Nothing to see here, please move along...
If you're looking for interactions between two different drugs, it turns out to be much harder, because you not only get the sales sites promoting them, you also get legitimate medical information sites where each page has a frame index pointing to the N different drugs they've got information about and often keywords about interaction (Drug A interacts badly with Drug Z and Drug B interacts well with drug F, but you wanted to know about A and B, etc.) This means that you need to look at a lot more legitimate sites to find anything, and therefore you've got to wade through a huge amount more junk because the real stuff isn't all at the top.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
For someone in the Search Engine Optimisation business, he should learn how to spell optimization correctly.
Pictures of naked women guarantee more traffic.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
And how much does it cost, and why isn't there any links to the web site or details on how to obtain said kit... for those posting these on /. cant we at least include just a tad more information on these things?
The following are replies last year on SPAM-L regarding the use of the .biz TLD for e-addresses and email URL's:
.biz, as well as any email
referencing a .biz address in the body."
.biz == /dev/null, and I think there's a *lot*
of people who share this opinion."
.biz domains and all mail that has a .biz URL in
the body as well. I asked about this issue a few months back and only
a couple people said they knew of two, perhaps three non-spam .biz
domains, everyone else said it was spam, spam, spam.
.com, .net, or .us if it's in the US, but never .biz."
"I think it's been poisoned by the spammers, and by general amusement that anyone would think that "biz" is a legitimate TLD. Sounds very hucksterish to me."
"With only a single exception, every one of the ~120 domains I act as postmaster for blocks all email from
"As far as I am concerned,
"I block all mail from
Get a
I wonder... if I hosted some popular humor video on my site (ala jib jab) that generated many crosslinks from pages unrelated to the content of my site, what would that do to page rank. That is, I'd have a lot of links from web sites about humor and such, but little from websites about polycarbonate sprockets (which is what I really want to be the #1 search result for).
Basically is google smart enough to account for context in page rank? or could I come to the top just by hosting popular content that is unrelated to the main content of my site...
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
I mean you probably don't want to do anything in your code that may negatively impact a search rank, but don't spend any more than two seconds thinking about page ranks. Getting and more importantly holding a top-twenty rank is a lesson in futility. It's you against the untold hordes, millions of them, and you are going to lose.
Everybody wants to take a passive approach to fame and fortune: I know, I'll just drop a few lines of code in here, and the world will beat a path to my site. Sorry, but you'll have to work for it just like everyone else.
First remember a few things. Your idea probably isn't that original, and despite your protests, it may not even be that good. Second, no one cares about your product or service, even if they need and don't know it yet. But, if you have managed to create a great and original product then people will find a way to find you. To make it easier for them, put the URL on every bit of marketing and business collateral the company employs. Build an engaging site. Update it regularly and keep the info on it fresh.
Otherwise, your site will just sit there and collect cyberdust.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
It's no secret: money talks. If you drum up 50 grand, you can get all sorts of directed traffic on your website. Add a few more zeros and you can probably get top search engine ranking on whatever you want.
stuff |
Before spending any money on an SEO book, people should make use of the free online resources, for instance Highrankings Forums.
SEM is hard work. But if you want to do it yourself:
Do the above and you will be better than 99% of all web sites.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
2. Spell things correctly.
:)
3. Create worth content.
Worthy? What was that about spelling?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Spam like this gets marked as spam by enough people and goes. Call this flamebait but why would some hacked up work by some 'industry expert' straight from flipping burgers five years ago be charging 200 for a book when textbooks costs 50?
Hi Guys,
Thanks for all the interesting posts regarding this review.
For what it's worth, we didn't solicit this review, we didn't submit it to Slashdot.org, and we didn't expect it (was a complete surprise for us).
In terms of 3rd party validation of this review, HighRankings.com, SearchEngineWatch.com and SEOBook.com (three of the sites recommended by various posters here for SEO-advice) have all reviewed this product and said positive things about it.
A bit of healthy skepticism is good, but this really is a great product that's backed by many independent reviews from reputable 3rd party sources. We don't promote Search Engine Spam, trickery, or "black hat" techniques, and we plan on updating the kit annually to keep it current.
And about the price? It's $197 USD including express tracked shipping anywhere in the world. It's available at: http://sitepoint.com/books/sem1/ .
_______________
The best search engine marketing is hands down buying the Adsense or whatever search engine program, Ads program for the keywords you want. But if you can not do that then reading a book will do nothing for your site the best thing to do is go to the sites in the top 10 for the keyword{s} your going for and see what links to them and take a look at their source code and see what they are putting for meta tags. In my opinon following this books advice would not be good following what the top ten do would be.