Taegan Lion
If you’ve spent any amount of time researching SEO you’ll soon realize that there is almost literally countless pieces of conflicting advice and guidance on best practices and methods. Here are 15 books you should read to get a better understanding of what SEO is, and how you can use it to your advantage.
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#1 Create a Website and Profit Your A to Z Blueprint
The book teaches you how to create the website in an SEO friendly way or as it is called onsite/onpage SEO. The book covers everything from how to pick the domain name to all the content on the website. A big bonus is that at the end there is a whole chapter about how you can convert more visitors and to optimize the conversion rates. You can read all about the buttons, colors and every other element a great website has. It is also written in a very simple way so everyone can understand it even if they don't have any IT background.
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Contributors: Iskra Evtimova from Iskra Evtimova
#2 Do What We Did by Brian McKay & Jerry Mooney
Do What We Did is a book that offers a step-by-step method to creating an online marketing business using SEO. The book explains how to leverage a blog into a platform for SEO companies. The authors show readers how creating relationships with SEO companies provides an easy way to make consistent money. The authors, themselves, stumbled upon this knowledge and now make a good living from it. They say there is plenty of room in the marketplace for others who want to work from home and make good money.
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Contributors: Jerry Mooney from Zenruption
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The extra $500 a week has been a blessing.
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Good information! Thanks for sharing
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Awesome book!!
#3 The Art of SEO by Eric Enge,Stephan Spencer & Jesse Stricchiola
The nature of SEO is that so much of the learning happens by trial and error, and a lot of our education is using online resources. Because it changes so quickly and there are so many different factors, opinions, and strategies out there, it's not easy to put it down on paper! The Art of SEO has been such a great read because it's comprehensive, and the authors did an excellent job of breaking things down so that beginners can learn from it and more experienced SEOs still have things to learn.
I'm using this book as the basis for a back to basics training program for my team. Because the clients we work with are all in the same industry, it's easy to fall into patterns or processes and forget the reasoning behind why we've built our strategies the way we have, so this has been a good reminder of the foundation and the why behind important SEO concepts. It's also been useful in identifying areas where we can improve our strategies and become more efficient with our time.
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Contributors: Laura Simis from Coalmarch
#4 Learn Search Engine Optimization by Adam Clarke
This book is great as it's relevant – SEO is constantly evolving and so methods that were successful even just 2 years ago are no longer potentially working, so this book focuses on the best practice for this year and how to optimize your SEO strategy.
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Contributors: Antonio Wedral from Statement Digital
#5 3 Months to No.1 by Will Coombe
To be honest, SEO is the kind of industry where any book published will be out of date to some extent within a year, so online resources should always take priority. But for a good grounding in the fundamentals, a book can be useful. On that basis, I'd recommend '3 Months to No.1' by Will Coombe, as a useful blueprint for business owners looking to either take ownership of their SEO strategy, or learn enough that they can evaluate the performance of the freelancer or agency doing their SEO. It has some useful sections on the anatomy of an SEO campaign, on-page optimization, local SEO, and a calendar of what you should do over 3 months to get your SEO in order. And it makes the valid points that SEO takes time, and is about the aggregation of many small steps, rather than a single immediate impact.
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Contributors: James Rice from WikiJob
#6 In the Plex by Steven Levy
In the Plex by Steven Levy, which gives great insight into how Google thinks and works written from the perspective of a technology reporter. For foundational knowledge of SEO best practices, read Moz's Beginner's Guide to SEO. For industry updates, look to SEO experts on Twitter. For understanding what Google wants, read In the Plex.
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Contributors: Kameron Jenkins from Moz
#7 Books to read on SEO
Influence, by Robert Cialdini, offers a fantastic insight into how a user, or potential customer perceives products and services. By better understanding, the way the user, or potential customer thinks, you can tailor your content and overall SEO strategy to appeal to this. With Organic Search being more and more focussed on user experience by the day, it's imperative that we understand our target market, and Cialdini's Influence allows us to do this.
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Contributors: Aaron Watts from Converted
#8 Ultimate Guide to Link Building by ric Ward and Garrett French
The late Eric Ward was prescient in his belief that link building was not a way to game search engine algorithms, but instead an earned outcome of respect and authority that would eventually lead to improved search engine rankings and conversions. He taught SEOs and link-builders to think holistically, that if you focused on providing value first, everything that came after that would be a whole lot easier and more fruitful. Any SEO starting out in the business should read this book as it will increase the potency of your efforts and help reduce or prevent useless diversions.
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Contributors: Donna Duncan from B-SeenOnTop
#9 The Definitive Guide to Selling on Amazon by Tracey Wallace
Amazon is one of the most important platforms on which to implement successful SEO strategies. Amazon is predicted to account for over half of internet sales by 2021, and therefore anyone who wants to sell well on the website needs to have great SEO on its product pages. Although this book has some interesting insights that aren’t SEO related, it does include all sorts of information on Amazon SEO that is useful.
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Contributors: Cory Sarrett from Online Optimism
#10 The CEO’s Guide to Marketing By Lonny Kocina
This book and author did an incredible job of presenting the topic in a new and refreshing way. I've read quite a bit about SEO over the years. This book, however, presented it in a very lamens manner that I've incorporated into my approach when explaining SEO to new and prospective clients.
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Contributors: Richard Barrett from Phalanx Media Group
#11 Traction by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares
Whilst not 100% focussed on pure SEO knowledge, the book provides an incredibly useful framework to rapidly test marketing channels such as SEO to find what works for your business and if it does, how to scale it.
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Contributors: Giorgio Cassella from Akateko
#12 500 Social Media Marketing Tips by Andrew Macarthy
I was transitioning my company from a traditional marketing agency to a modern digital marketing firm. Reading this book was invaluable at the time for providing easy and actionable tips that I could do A/B testing on before incorporating it into a client's campaign.
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Contributors: Richard Barrett from Phalanx Media Group
#13 SEO Like I’m 5 by Matthew Capala
I read this book a few years ago and I really enjoyed the use of case studies and step-by-step explanations on how to implement SEO strategies.
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Contributors: Richard Barrett from Phalanx Media Group
#14 SEO 2017 & Beyond by Andy Williams
Looking for an SEO all-in-one book? Pick up a copy of SEO 2017 & Beyond. The author, Dr. Andy Williams, leaves no questions unanswered — especially when it comes to the technical side of search engine optimization. One of the best parts about his writing is that he always updates the work he published from the previous year which helps you keep your finger on the SEO pulse. If you are someone who has the basics under your belt and are continuing to hone your SEO skills - this is a must read.
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Contributors: Lauren Laftsidis from TruLaw
#15 Get More Customers Using Google My Business
This book will give a comprehensive, in-depth step-by-step instruction on how to setup your Google Map listing and improve your local SEO. This book will be especially useful if you are a local, brick and mortar business, if you have multiple business locations or franchising, but will also be useful for other business types in general, where many have jumped ship to optimize their local SEO. This book will give you decent tips and tricks that will work in 2018 and 2019, and will also provide general tips on how to improve your search engine rankings.
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Contributors: Mike Khorev from Nine Peaks Media
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Also a great checklist to ensure your business in on track!
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Amazing knowledge shared by the author in this book. Highly recommended!
Awesome book! Highly recommended!
I love this book. There were so many things I didn’t know.