Hi everyone,

 

I am a designer and have been asked to help the SEO of a website - I've purchased a book off Amazon 'Search Engine Optimization - An Hour A Day'.

It arrived today (hurray) ..first thoughts - this book seems pretty good, I can't spend all hours of the day focussing on SEO as I have duties to attend to as a designer.. but this brings me to my second point, can I really improve the SEO of this site with just an hour a day?!

I'm not code-savvy at all and just the thought of trying to improve google ranking mind boggles me. I'm really hoping this book will help me understand SEO better (and not scare me so much).

 

Has anyone heard of this book before? I'd love to know your thoughts!

 

Thanks,

 

Marie

Hi Marie,

I was intrigued so I looked up that book on Amazon. It looks like a great planner with tips etc. I wonder do you need good seo knowledge first in order to use it fully? I also wonder if the generic nature of the book helps you to optimise an industry specific site.

Let us know how you get on!

Hi PixieWeb, thank you for your reply!
The book is written for self-starters within companies that want to take over control of their SEO, so it seemed perfect for what I needed! They don't expect you to have any experience in SEO and has different sections for B2B, B2C, Large Organizations, Small Organizations, and Brick-and-Mortar companies - so it covers a wide range of industries.

 

They say (quite a lot) in the book that SEO is not rocket science and all you need is patience and willingness to learn - I have have both but just can't seem to get my head around it just yet - I'm hoping that the more I read it, the more I will understand it a bit better :/ fingers crossed!

Just re-reading the title, I think I have this book as well. I recall the hour a day selling point thinking it was realistic.

 

There are many different views of SEO and all; some say it's a 'dark art', others say content outweighs the work of SEO experts. I'm similar to yourself and not an SEO person and don't want to undermine the hard work that SEO professionals undertake. It's a massive time factor (from my understanding) so you need to dedicate your time to getting things right. Perhaps some of the techniques are easy to pick up, but to really 'get' SEO, you need to invest in time (don't look at me - I have no concept of time ).

 

If it's the same book as the one I have (a marketing agency of two in San Francisco?), I think it's a good start. I just can't commit to an hour a day (as ridiculous as that sounds) on a regular basis. There are a lot of knowledgeable people on here that know about SEO. I'm thinking I need to go back to that book again

The first step is to look at your own site and make sure you've got the seo right on there first.

 

To keep it quick - check the page names first - make sure all the page names are readable and relevant to the topic / content on that page

I agree that SEO isn't rocket science, otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up so fast. When I say fast, I mean one full year to be fully confident in getting results.

Time is what it takes, and dedication. I research all the time to add to my knowledge and then I have to put things into practice to see what works and what doesn't.

I can cook but I don't call myself a chef because it's not what I dedicate my day to and my knowledge of cooking is rudimentary.

You can learn Seo. Of course you can. Here's how I did it...

I got my head around the whole 'mystery' of seo when I broke my foot last year and had all this time on my hands. What got me off the starting blocks was an ebook from seoinpractice dot com.

I can't post links yet as I'm a new member so here is the url: seoinpractice dot com/free-seo-guide dot html

It takes a lot of time but is very comprehensive.

Just IGNORE a lot of the "link building" section because you need to be very discerning about where you get your links from these days.

 

Best of luck!!

Thanks for the link, PixieWeb. I'll have a better look at this this evening

 

I can cook but I don't call myself a chef because it's not what I dedicate my day to and my knowledge of cooking is rudimentary.

 

Love this

Hi guys,

 

Thank you for your replies! That sounds like the same book 4li4s. Thankfully at the minute I can manage to squeeze in an hour a day - but when things get more hectic I think I'll be struggling.

 

PixieWeb - I hope I don't have to break my foot to get my head around SEO

 

I think I'm just confused how Page names and Keywords can boost page rankings! - all the page names are currently relevant to the content. Should they all contain the company name or is it better to have a variety of different titles? (eg, 'Page title - Company name', 'Page title - Company name, Location', 'Page title')

 

Thanks for the links, I will check them out now

Breaking something is always a good way to make you sit on your ass for long periods of time and read stuff. I'd have learnt more at school if I'd broken my hip.

 

Everything you need to know about meta tags is explained in that seo book I mentioned but I found another great ebook today that is more specific about on-page seo. You can find it here: copyblogger dot com / seo - copywriting

 

4li4s you can use that chef analogy if you want Mix it up. Say....I can drive....not a formula 1 racer....blah blah blah

Ill throw my 2 pence in here.

 

Optimisation isn't difficulty; tweaking content to get the most out of rankings and ensuring your content is targeting the correct keyword. But you can't learn everything from a book. It's a fast paced industry and something that you need to dedicated time to, in order to achieve good rankings.

 

And what sort of rankings? Well, I can rank a website for pretty any keyword. My personal website is 6th for Cheap SEO and 14th for SEO Manchester and that was down to some new testing I'm doing.

 

I wouldn't ignore link building at all and I think that's a foolish thing to say. Your website will not rank without links. Great content will get you a few links, but you need to get your website exposure in order to drive traffic. I wouldn't be able to,get some of my clients 100,000 visitors a month without good, solid link building.

 

Ignore books and stick with reputable websites such as SEOmoz. They're up to date and right on the nail. Practice, too and target low level keywords so you can see the improvements happen.

 

There is a hell of a lot to learn. You'll get the basics if you dedicate time and effort but its a science. There's more to it than just keywords. I don't want to put you off learning it, I just don't like it when people think that SEO can be taught in 6 months. I'm still learning after dedicated 5 days a week for 4 year. Good luck!

Wow you can't delete a post here! mis used the "quote" feature and tried to delete and start again but no...so my post is below!!

Edited March 15, 201313 yr by PixieWeb

Ill throw my 2 pence in here.

 

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I wouldn't ignore link building at all and I think that's a foolish thing to say. Your website will not rank without links. Great content will get you a few links, but you need to get your website exposure in order to drive traffic. I wouldn't be able to,get some of my clients 100,000 visitors a month without good, solid link building.

 

 

I may have been misunderstood regarding my "Ignore the section on link building". That comment was specific to the seo ebook that I recommended as it is outdated and doesn't warn about the latest Google updates, penguin and such. And books, articles and "googling" are all sources of information when starting out with seo. You have no other way of learning the basics unless you are working as an intern in an seo company. Once you have the basics you can put them into practice in real life but without the basics you are starting at a website not knowing where to start!

Wow you can't delete a post here! mis used the "quote" feature and tried to delete and start again but no...so my post is below!!

u can edit your post if need be or message a mod if u need one removed

well, you can .. but first you need to learn SEO and then dedicating your 2 hours daily will help you get your website ranking higher within few months

An hour a day is not a bad book, I loved the structure and its design when I read it. However, for a beginner it might be slightly overwhelming. I would recommend starting the learning with SEOmoz's "The free Beginner's Guide to SEO". Google it, you will see. It is shorter and sums up quite nicely what this industry is about.

Just focus upon the keyword you want to publicize and start from basic on page and off page(social bookmarking, article submisson etc.) stuff and you will definitely achieve what you want.

An hour a day is not a bad book, I loved the structure and its design when I read it. However, for a beginner it might be slightly overwhelming. I would recommend starting the learning with SEOmoz's "The free Beginner's Guide to SEO". Google it, you will see. It is shorter and sums up quite nicely what this industry is about.

 

Thank you Tom - I am definitely finding the book overwhelming! I will check SEOmoz out, thanks!

 

And thank you everyone else for your advice

Don't be scared to learn new things. SEO is one of interesting topics in online business industry. I have been discussing SEO copywriting here, and I always give a positive views about it as I have proven its effectiveness. You may have doubt about it at this moment, but I assure when you already learn it you will love it.

 

 

 

 

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Really don't have much knowledge about that book but, SEO is not so easy as it sounds. If you are a beginner 1hr is really not enough. A book can't tell you how to do it bcoz SEO is not about magic ticks really. You have to spend time understand the process & you website needs, it gradually comes with deep knowledge & practice.

 

If you want good result then, 1st understand the process, website structure & needfuls. Spend a bit more time to get quality result.

Its not that much tough if you are very much interested in SEO. Just add to Google Webmaster tools and Analytics to monitor the website for errors and traffic soures. Then create facebook, twitter and other high authority social networking website accounts and be active with other users in helping and contributing stuffs. Create links naturally and thus we covered from the Beginner tag to next level of expertise.

Try to read more SEO journals or SEO related topic that helps a lot.

Edited June 18, 201313 yr by rexjohnson