Product Description

Written in a clear, non-technical, style by a leading expert in SEO (search engine optimization), GTTTOG explains techniques and strategies proven to return higher search engine rankings and sales. It addresses all aspects of search engine marketing and includes an assessment of the impact of Web 2.0 on Internet search strategies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7499 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

.NET Magazine, August, 2008
"David Viney's book pulls off the difficult trick of both being comprehensible to beginners and offering a level of comprehensive (and up to date) detail that will appeal to older hands. It's divided into seven steps that broadly follow the timeline of an SEO campaign, with some useful case studies. Put simply, this book delivers what it promises."

From the Publisher
Search Expert, David Viney, provides his top 5 tips to improve the search ranking of your business.

Court the Crawl
Don't bother with paid search engine submission services; they're now obsolete. If you have at least one link from another website, the search engine spiders will list you eventually. 90% of the market is controlled by the big 4 (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com).

More important today is that all your pages carry the right weight (on Google, called "PageRank"). Make your site structure like a tree; the home page is the trunk, your categories the branches and the pages the leaves. Make your tree (a) symmetrical rather than lopsided, and (b) don't have too many branch levels before you reach the leaves. Less is more!

Find Phrases the Pay
What do you want to be top on Google for? Don't limit your ambitions to being top for the name of your business, but target instead searchers looking generally for services you offer.

The key is to research the popularity and competition for each search phrase. As an example, did you know that people search for "rugs" four times more often than "carpets", but that carpets features on twice as many pages? There are a number of keyword analysis tools on the web that help you find these "phrases that pay".

Target the Long Tail
Some phrases, like "mp3 player" are very competitive! Try targeting the longer phrases, as demand for these falls more slowly than supply!

For example, ranking well for "ski chalet Chamonix child care" is likely to be easier than "ski accommodation France" (and get more conversions)

Prime your Pages
The best-known part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is SEO copywriting, the art of writing content that both humans and search engines love.

Realize every part of the page is read by the spider, including the full URL (or page address).

The most important page elements are the page title, the full URL and the page headings.

Remember 3 rules; (a) prominence, (b) proximity and (c) density. Put your keywords nearer the front of a text block, keep them together and make sure they appear often.

Landing the Links
The Google algorithm gets tweaked often but retains a simple principle; sites that get mentioned often by others (on a topic) will rank better on that topic! You need links from other sites in (a) quantity, (b) quality and (c) containing the keywords or phrases that you want to be top for.

If you write great content, others will naturally find it and link to it over time, but you can speed this along through listing on directories, forum participation, article submission, online press release publication, and exchanging links with other webmasters. KEY FACTS Do not doubt the size of the prize on offer; It has never been as vital to top the search engines as it is today! 40% The U-Switch forecast for the percentage of all sales online by 2020. 90% Percentage of site visits that originate from the top four search engines 80% The Market Share of Google on most industry measures 84% Of users never go beyond the bottom of page two of the Google results 65% The percentage of users who never click on sponsored (or paid) ads

From the Back Cover
The vast majority of searchers never make it past page two of Google or click on sponsored listings, so being at the top of the standard search results can literally transform your business. Having your site in the top 10 is like having a store near the entrance of the largest shopping mall in history, while if you're outside the top 20 you could experience the frustration of an empty shop with few visitors and poor conversion rates.

Search engine optimization (or SEO for short) involves making it easy for search engines to find your website and boosting your position in their rankings. Get to the Top on Google is the first book to address all aspects of search engine marketing comprehensively through a simple, seven-step methodology, tried and tested with clients small and large, including Amazon and Microsoft. Designed to be accessible for the beginner but comprehensive enough for the skilled marketer, the book is illustrated with global case studies and covers emerging ideas in Web 2.0, local search optimization and the future of search itself.

Discover how to attract searchers with the phrases that pay, how to court the crawl of the Google spiders, tips for copywriting and link building, how to target the long tail, and techniques for tracking and fine-tuning your campaign to make more money online. This book could be the best investment you ever make in your website and your business.

Customer Reviews

Great book with great tips!
This book is spectacular, clearly written, and you have confidence in the author from the beginning that he is an expert. The book clearly shows you the current "Best guesses" of what to do in order to get to the top of Google, or if not the top, appropriate places to maximize your ROI.

I give this book only 4 out of 5 stars as I felt the author could have done with a bit less self promotion of mentioning his website's entire URL several times per chapter. His website is a SUBSCRIPTION service making it feel a bit tacky. What he was saying essentially is that "This is the way things are now, but things could change any moment, and you can get the most updated list of X, Y, and/or Z at my site..." It's definitely very true what he was saying and if his website was free, (Even though a 6 month subscription is free with the purchase of the book), I don't think it would have appeared as shameless.

That really is just a small knock on an otherwise spectacular book that I feel could benefit most SEO specialists/entrepreneur's/or even just web site hobbyists. The book is cheap, and at 220 pages can be easily read by even the busiest people in under a week.

Also, the author is from the UK, and gives plenty of information on how to rank well in other countries, and really focus's on the globalization of your website (Well, as much as you can focus in a few dozen pages). For people who live outside the USA I would think this book would be ESPECIALLY helpful for them as this section is certainly something that is not found in most SEO books that I am aware of. Being from the USA as I am, I found the section interesting, but not necessarily useful for what I was looking for however.

Not very useful
I wanted to use the structured approach to SEO presented in this book but it was mainly a waste of my time. The system is based on the frequency of searchs for your keywords but can not be used since the suggested tools are no longer available and/or based on very old data. SEO changes rapidly and I was hoping this recently published book would be more topical. Frequent plugs for his website are a distraction and the book is unnecessarily jargon heavy. It did get me to follow through on some things so I'm giving it 2 stars.

a book which mostly promotes the author services and website
The book repeats the most common SEO techniques and repeatedly promotes the author business and web-site.