Review by Anthony Lawrence for The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice)
Rating:
I am one who has been very outspoken about the more shady SEO practitioners and about the ridiculously overprices “courses” that are heavily promoted on the Internet. SEO has acquired some of the taint of huckster marketing because of that.

I hope this book helps eliminate some of that. There’s no need to pay some self-styled “Internet Guru” hundreds or thousands of dollars for SEO secrets. There are no secrets: every concept, every “trick”, every piece of advice is available on the Internet for free. Of course you have to find it all, you have to learn what things are outdated, what advice doesn’t work – or you could find 99% here in this book.

Of course it’s not for everyone. It assumes some technical knowledge or at least access to someone with that knowledge. As an example, at several points 301 redirects are used as the solution certain SEO issues. Although some minor direction is given about implementing these, you’d need more than is provided here if you were a neophyte – someone using Blogger or [...] isn’t going to become proficient with Apache from reading this.

The only small complaint I can make is that sometimes the authors use too many examples, especially for the more basic concepts at the beginning of the book. However, too many is far better than too few, so I won’t complain too much. I definitely can’t complain that they left anything out: this could serve as a course book for a SEO class.

I’ll be recommending this strongly.

Review by Jason L. Mcdonald for The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice)
Rating:
The Art of SEO is a good book, but it could have been a great book. I reviewed it on my blog, in detail, and as an SEO training and teacher, I am always on the lookout for the latest and greatest in SEO.

The book has a lot of great insights into SEO, but it suffers drastically from a forest-for-the-trees phenomenon. As I have taught several hundreds of people SEO, I know that most people do not need the esoterica. They need the basic process of SEO – from 1) keywords, 2) on page factors like page tags and website structure, 3) link building, 4) metrics.

This book has all the esoterica, with no break outs to the big picture. Tons of small print, and no headlines. Where was the editor? Asleep?

If you could combine the Dummies series in terms of layout with the content of this book, you’d have a fantastic guide to SEO. But, alas, you do not.

Review by John Jacobson for The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice)
Rating:
How do you create a web site that ranks high in the various search engines on the web? That is the subject of search engine optimization or “SOE.”

This book might be considered a Bible of SOE, it covers most of the available techniques and strategies for making your web site visible in search engines. It is well written, with many examples and specific URLs.

If there is a criticism, I failed to find a ranking of preferred approaches to designing a high visibility web site. I suspect that most of the currently available approaches are listed, but there is no “SEO for Dummies” approach that I could find.

This is the kind of book that you could spend a great deal of time reading, and then wonder where you should start on designing your web site. It states that “there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter SEO plan.” That may be true, but there are general principles that may be implemented in the initial web site design, and the design may be tweaked over time to improve rankings and exposure.

With those caveats in mind, this is a very complete book. The authors have started a SEO blog which allows interaction with their readers. This should add to the value of the book over time.