Nonfiction Book Reviews

A while back, I read and reviewed WordPress for Dummies, and at the end of it, I mentioned I was going to review Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, 3rd Edition by Peter Kent. Well, today is that day.

I had my library order the copy in for me (which is why it took me so long to get it read and reviewed), but it was worth the wait.  There was quite a bit of information in the book that I had never heard before, but even worse, I found out that some of the “SEO tricks” I had been taught before were flat-out wrong.

I have a habit of turning up the bottom of a page when I read something I think is worthwhile and that I might end up quoting later in my review of the book.  It’s easier for me than to sit with a notepad and pen and take notes while reading.

But with SEO for Dummies, there was so much new information that I needed to process that I ended the book with 19 folded-down pages, a new record for me.  Since this is a library book, I can’t keep it as a reference book, so I’m going to end up going back through and taking notes anyway.  So much for being lazy…

Now for the negatives: Peter Kent (at least in this book) has a rather confusing writing style.  He tends to say a bunch of things as if they are good thing, then finish the section by saying you “never want to do that.”  This left me confused - did I not want to do the last thing?  Or all the things?  And if I didn’t want to do those things, then why was he talking about them in a positive light?

Perhaps I’m just slower than most (Brothers, that was not an invitation to make wisecracks) so maybe he was only confusing to me.  But I felt like his writing style could’ve used editorial help.

He also tended to repeat things.  A lot.  Like the fact that when someone uses JavaScript to create links between websites, the search bots can’t read those links, and thus the website doesn’t get “credit” for the link in the search engine’s eyes.  (If that was Greek to you, read the book - he explains all of that quite nicely).

The first time I read that, I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” so I marked the page.  The second and third time, I thought, “Hmm…Didn’t I already read that?” By the fifth time, I was becoming mightily unimpressed with his ability to repeat the information as if it was new to the reader all over again.  By the seventh time, I was sure he was simply trying to pad his word count (and the book does clock in at 408 pages.  This is no small book).

I shouldn’t bellyache too much, because overall, it was a great book on SEO techniques.  There’s a lot of guesswork that goes into SEO work - after all, Google’s not going to announce how it ranks websites, or every web master out there is going to tailor their website to fit those specifications exactly, and then all searches do is return pages of advertisements.

So in that kind of environment of guesswork and to-the-best-of-my-knowledge theories, there tends to be a lot of flat-out wrong information on the web when it comes to SEO techniques.   Peter Kent does do a good job of clarifying a lot of that.

If you’re serious about creating a website that will rank well and bring in a lot of visitors from search engines, you’ll want to read this book.  It’s not a book for a complete newbie (some topics are too complicated for even Dummies books to make completely Dummy Compatible) but if you’ve spent some time online, working on websites and/or blogging, and you’re wanting to take your site to the next level, this would be the book to read.

I give SEO for Dummies 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Hava