I was out to lunch the other day with Jordy the other day and he asked me what I read about SEO that he could read too.
I told him that I normally don’t read anything, because there’s so much garbage out there that it’s a giant waste of time.
I still think reading most stuff is a waste of time, because the SEO industry is mostly a bunch of sheep who have never really had success doing SEO but they’ve read a bunch of garbage and they’re repeating it. What you end up reading is stuff that is outdated, wrong, partly wrong, blatantly wrong, or partially correct.
I do on occasion read ebooks about SEO. My experience with Ebooks is usually different than most people’s. My experience is that there are a ton of ebooks out there with really really really valuable information in them, but that in order to use that info to your advantage (or, in order to use it to make money) you have to have other knowledge already. Just reading one ebook isn’t going to get you there, but if you can combine some of that knowledge with some other knowledge of your own, you can really find some winning combinations.
So, back to my ebooks and SEO…
A few days before I met with Jordy I had bought an ebook about seo which I told him would probably be garbage and I’d probably return it and get my $80 back.
Well, it turns out that Aaron Walls SEO Book is one of the most informative pieces of information I’ve ever read about SEO.
Here’s why I think it’s so good:
In SEO, there are “white hat” methods and there are “black hat” methods. White hat is everything Google tells you to do. Black hat is everything Google tells you not to do.
Most of the SEO world refuses to talk about black hat stuff except to say that it’s morally wrong and the people who do it are evil.
Personally, I think there’s nothing wrong with black hat stuff. You can’t attach morals to a method of getting ranked highly in the search engines. Search engines are for profit companies.
SEO methods either work or they don’t. They’re not good or bad except that certain things might get you in trouble with a search engine. It’s no different than any business practice in which you take a risk of making huge profits or losing everything you have.
Aaron acknowledges this.
I was shocked.
He talks about how you can employ black hat methods, they just might end up getting your domain kicked out of the search engine indexes.
That’s why I think this book is so good.
Aaron actually has experience with the black hat methods and realizes that a bunch of them work. Because of this experience, he can put 2 and 2 together (white hat methods, black hat methods, search engine algorithms, other knowledge) and come up with some really good ideas.
It’s also obvious that he’s gotten a lot of his information from some of the engineers at google and yahoo, and not from other users posting stuff at places webmasterworld.com or other SEO forums.
That’s another reason I think it’s so good, Aaron doesn’t equate “search engine” with “google”. Most people out there don’t even acknowkledge that Yahoo or MSN exist except to laugh at them. What they don’t realize is that yahoo and msn traffic is often times more valuable than is google traffic. They also don’t realize that yahoo/msn get a LOT of searches.
So, for those of you wanting to learn SEO, here’s the book I’m currently reading.