SEO Search Engine Book Revealed.pdf

There are many sections in this e-book. Most of them relate to search marketing, although some of
them relate to other aspects of the web.
While I actively market this book as being about S.E.O., it is actually more about everything I know
about the web. While there are many guides to how and where to start on the web, most of them are laced
with affiliate links and bogus recommendations. The goal of this guide is what I had wished I read when I
jumped on the web a few years ago. I also reference the most useful resources I found in each field so that
if you are interested in learning more about those subjects you can see what I recommend.
Some areas might read well, whereas others might be a bit choppy. The reason for this is that I rewrite
sections of it frequently. What started off as a 24 page file is, a couple years later, a couple hundred pages
long. I try to reread it as often as I can without getting burned out from reading it too much. It is a hard
balance to strike to keep learning and keep updating everything I have learned. At the same time, I have to
learn about search in depth so that I can also provide better-than-average information about that topic.
If you already know a topic covered in a certain section of this book, well then, you may not learn much, or
anything from that section. I dont expect to be able to tell a 20 year professional copywriter how to do her
job. The point of the other sections is that S.E.O. works much better as a marketing mechanism if you use
it in conjunction with other ideas and do not do S.E.O. on an island.
S.E.O. as a Standalone Product
Search algorithms are still in their infancy. Many people will still be able to run successful businesses doing
nothing but S.E.O. for at least a few years to come. When I was new to S.E.O., and only knew a bit about
it, I did not have a strong brand or understand marketing well. I did things like rank people for terms worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars while charging them a one time $300 fee. Did my efforts pay off? Sure,
but due to business ignorance I still almost wound up bankrupt because I undercharged for services.
As you learn more about the value of S.E.O., and how it integrates into the web, you should be able to
increase your income or social reach significantly. Only by pairing S.E.O. with other marketing methods or
viewing the web through a larger lens will you be able to fully appreciate the value of S.E.O.
If you do not know what P.P.C., C.S.S., S.S.I., C.M.S., or many of the acronyms mean, it does not make
sense to try to learn all of them in one day. It took me a couple years to learn the stuff I wrote in this ebook.
With that said, in many areas it is adequately sufficient to understand the concept of how or why
something works without knowing all the deepest details.
On top of being a book to read, I also wanted this book to act as a reference guide. The index makes it
quick and easy to flip through to a specific area if you want to look at something more in depth later.
While some of this guide talks about technical details, they may not be that important for the average
webmaster to know. For example, latent semantic indexing finds mathematical patterns in language and
determines what concepts a page represents using mathematics to represent those words. All most people
T
S E O B O O K
6
really need to know about latent semantic indexing is that those types of algorithms would favor natural
writing over unnatural keyword stuffed gibberish.
There are many other algorithms and ideas driving search, but at the end of the day, the end goal of all the
algorithms is to favor useful content so the results are relevant, which, in turn, allows the engines to make
more money serving ads.
Content has many meanings though, and there are different ways to make content useful to different
people. As much as this is an exact guide for what you should do to promote your site, some of the ideas in
this e-book are also there to spark your creativity to help you think of ways to gain strong advantages over
your competition.
Any internet marketing method that is exactly formula based misses the social aspects of the web, and falls
into at least one of the following groups
Leaves footprints that are easy to detect and discount
Leaves footprints that are easy for competitors to duplicate
Does not consider your strengths and weaknesses, and thus has you waste time focusing on a
formula instead of working off your strengths and shoring up your weaknesses.
Is easily beat in the search results when an open minded creative competitor leverages the social
aspects of the web.
The goal of this book is to help you think up unique ideas that help you build real value, social / business
relationships, and competitive advantages that are hard to duplicate.
Questions, Comments, & Concerns
Some people ask for me to do ten hours worth of competitive analysis for free. Generally I cant do hours
of consulting for free, but if you have a quick question or do not understand something please make sure
you e-mail me so I can try my best to help you.
You bought this book hoping to get useful and easy to understand information, and that is my goal. I have
probably read millions of forum posts and web pages, so many of the random thoughts scattered
throughout this e-book might not make a bunch of sense to someone who has not done the same. Some of
the ideas came from errors I made on my sites, and some of them came from errors friends made.
Most sites do not end up getting banned or penalized from search engines without reason, although on rare
occasion it does happen. Sometimes engines are quick to respond, and sometimes they do not care much.
As you learn more about why they do certain things and how the business aspects play into the algorithms
it becomes easier to evaluate where they might go and how they might try to go there.
S.E.O. is both reactive and proactive.
S E O B O O K
7
If a section of my e-book is not clear to you, or does not make sense then that is my fault and I should
explain it to you. Feel free to send me an e-mail if you have ANY questions.
This book is primarily my voice and how I understand the web. To help give you a broader perspective
beyond my own I also interviewed many search, marketing,, and web experts. I recommend you also read
the interview bonus at http://www.seobook.com/seo-interviews.pdf
Best of luck with your sites,


How to Read this e-book 5
S.E.O. as a Standalone Product ..............................5
Questions, Comments, & Concerns .......................6
Why Search? 8
Finding Prospects ....................................................8
Interactive Elements ..............................................10
Some Notes.............................................................10
Brief History of the Web 11
The Goal of Search Engines & How they Work ...11
Origins of the Web .................................................18
Commercialized Cat & Mouse ...............................19
Choosing a Domain Name.....................................24
Hosting....................................................................32
Interactive Elements ..............................................34
Some Notes.............................................................34
General Internet Topics 36
Changing Your Site ................................................39
Copy Writing ...........................................................43
Usability ..................................................................48
Generating Revenue...............................................54
Interactive Elements ..............................................63
Some Notes.............................................................66
Writing for Search Engines 68
Keywords ................................................................69
Meta Tags................................................................87
Page Title Done Wrong ..........................................91
Page Title Done Right ............................................92
Internal Linking.......................................................95
Navigation .............................................................100
Optimizing Your Page Copy ................................102
Building Content ..................................................107
Unexplored Waters...............................................111
Interactive Elements ............................................112
Some Notes...........................................................115
Directories and Communities 117
Directories vs. Search Engines...........................117
Submitting Your Site............................................118
Social Interaction and Links................................118
General Directories ..............................................121
Niche Directories..................................................126
Interactive Elements............................................ 131
Some Notes.......................................................... 132
Search Engines 133
The Major Search Engines.................................. 133
Google .................................................................. 133
Yahoo! Search ..................................................... 152
MSN ...................................................................... 157
Ask........................................................................ 159
Comparing Search Results................................. 163
Interactive Elements............................................ 164
Some Notes.......................................................... 167
Link Building: AKA the Holy Grail 168
Text in Incoming Links........................................ 168
Exchanging Links................................................ 176
Requesting Links................................................. 177
Evaluating the Quality of a Potential Link
Partners................................................................ 184
Free Links & Buying Links ................................. 186
Waiting for Results.............................................. 199
Customizing Your Browser for S.E.O. ............... 200
Interactive Elements............................................ 200
Some Notes.......................................................... 204
Pay-Per-Click 205
Before You Start .................................................. 205
What is Pay-Per-Click? ....................................... 207
Yahoo! Search Marketing ................................... 209
Ad Writing Tips.................................................... 215
Customer Tracking and Bid Management......... 217
Google Adwords.................................................. 219
Bonus Info: How to Improve Click-through Rate
and Slash Google AdWords Costs to Maximize
Profits:.................................................................. 225
Microsoft AdCenter ............................................. 236
Resources Cited .................................................. 237
Some Notes.......................................................... 241
Monitoring Results 242
When Results Don't Show .................................. 242
SEO Worst Practice Manual................................ 243
Other Problems.................................................... 246
Speeding Things Up - Paid Inclusion ................ 249