“The Art of SEO” is a solid account of the state of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as it stands today.
SEO is, of course, all about improving the number (or quality) of hits to your site(s) organically. It is distinct from SEM (Search Engine Marketing) which involves paying for clicks.
SEO has a bad rap and frankly with all of the shady practitioners out there, it is a deserved reputation. But this book goes a long way to showing that you don’t need to throw buckets of money at a consultant or anyone else to improve your search rankings. Most of SEO is pretty straightforward and it is explained in this book very well.
The authors clearly lay out the fundamentals, and correct many common myths. Nice that they devote an entire chapter to redesigns and domain name changes (timely for me as that is just what I am about to do).
Nice too that the book goes into some of the more esoteric regions of SEO like image-, local-, video- and vertical-search. Also nice is that the book is for both marketing and tech types.
You’ll be wearing this one out as you go back to it again and again for practical, useful advice. Highly recommended.