Ars Poetica in Poetry is when a poet writes about the art of poetry itself; these are typically poet’s poetry, poems written by poets for other poets and for themselves. Such is Donny Dover’s Search Engine Optimization Secrets. As a book for SEO professionals, it is excellent and a first of its kind. As a book for small business people, it isn’t a match. You would be better off with Peter Kent’s Search Engine Optimization for Dummies. Here’ is my book review of Search Engine Optimization Secrets
An SEO Playbook for SEO Experts, Not Your Average Small Businessperson
By Jason McDonald
Senior SEO Instructor – JM Internet Group
Posted: April 2, 2011
Contents:
Ars Poetica and Search Engine Optimization Secrets
Secrets
Method in Search Engine Optimization
Ars Poetica and Search Engine Optimization Secrets
There are poems by poets for other poets; films by directors for other film directors; and now Danny Dover gives us SEO for other SEO gurus. Useful? Absolutely. Especially if you are an SEO expert yourself. This book has several chapters on how to organize your SEO project. So if you are an SEO consultant or company this book is a gem of how-to-get-organized.
That said, it suffers from the geeks-know-all attitude that plagues the SEO industry. The SEO industry will never, ever truly expand and go mainstream as long as it is a tragedy of geeks leading geeks. Yes, robots.txt is important. Yes, we should all worship at the font of Google’s Webmaster tools, and yes, I adore cuddly Matt Cutts as much as the next guy. But, what is really lacking in the SEO industry? What do our clients struggle with?
- Information overload: too much esoterica, and not enough BIG PICTURE information.
- Too much GEEK and not enough English.
- An abysmal lack of positioning SEO as a technique of MARKETING (which it is) vs. a technique of computer science (which it is not).
If you are a small business person investigating SEO, or looking for an SEO consultant (besides choosing me, because I am bilingual: I speak Geek and I speak Marketing)… Buy this book! Just not for yourself. Buy it for your SEO consultant. It is a great book for him or her to get organized, on a step-by-step level.
Secrets
Remember the phrase, Don’t judge a book by its cover? Well in this era of Amazon and Kindle, we need to revise that to Don’t judget a book by its title. I ordered this book for SECRETS to Search Engine Optimization not as a how to in terms of managing my business and client flow.
Fortunately, thankfully, it does share some good secrets. First, domain vs. page popularity. I had long suspected that this was a concept, but Danny put this into words. I will now teach all my students this critical difference, and it makes intuitive sense. There are just too many new pages on the Internet for the old saw that PageRank is URL dependent to be true; Dover is confirmation of what I intuitively suspected – domains have PageRank across their pages, not just URL’s. Clear insight.
Second, link building techniques (pgs. 122- 125). Not really secrets but useful nonetheless. Everyone says go out and get links, but no one really explains how. Here, Danny gives some great information on how to go out and solicit links – start a blog, sign up for HARD (Help a Reporter Out), write articles, offer to guest blog, etc. None of this rocket science, but all useful to share with your clients.
Third, throughout the book there are other nuggets here and there… Such as how to cloak your requests to Google to avoid personalization – neat trick, Danny!
Method in Search Engine Optimization
Method in SEO is increasingly important. My clients are often overwhelmed… Too much information, too many esoteric details, and definitely too many SEO Geeks parading around like total know-it-alls… Danny has the beginnings of a method for working with clients, albeit too hard on the side of Geek and not hard enough on the side of marketing. But, all the same, that effort redeems the book and allows Danny to check this one off of his bucket list.
