It’s no secret that Google is constantly updating its algorithm, which means keeping up with what works and what doesn’t when trying to get your website to rank for certain searches is a task that never ends. It also makes it difficult to choose a good SEO book. When was it published? If it was first published a decade ago, is there a more recent edition?
When I was looking for my latest SEO read, I looked at some lists of the best SEO books, and this one topped multiple lists and cost only $4 on Amazon, so I grabbed it.
Don’t waste your time.
It claims to be updated for 2023, but the book has clearly not bee updated. The most glaring example was when it said, “by the year 2022.” I got so mad, I almost threw my Kindle across the room.
Table of Contents
Outdated Advice on Backlinks
There was a fair amount of outdated advice in here, such as the chapter on backlinks that recommends guest blogging as a great way to build backlinks to your website.
Google said years ago that it doesn’t like guest blogging as a linkbuilding strategy and now requests that all backlinks from guest blog posts have a “no follow” tag, which ensures it won’t affect your SEO. None of this was mentioned in the book.
Keep in mind, there are still some benefits to guest blogging. At the very least, it gets you in front of a new audience, and the links to your website will still work, which means they can still drive organic traffic to your website. It just won’t count towards your SEO.
Clarke also recommends directories as a great way to build backlinks. Google has started downgrading backlinks from directories because they’re so easy to get and SEO professionals were going after directory backlinks so hard that it ceased to be a measure of authority.
Outdated (and Unhelpful) Advice on Core Updates
This book also referenced Google’s Panda update, which Google recently announced as having been replaced by another algorithm update called Coati, which isn’t even mentioned in this book.
The very last chapter of this waste of time touches on Google’s algorithm updates in general, but it doesn’t go into specifics with any of the updates, and I don’t think it even bothered to mention any of the updates from 2022. In providing tips for recovering from a Google core update if your rankings took a hit, it doesn’t mention that any changes you make after a core update are unlikely to to have an effect until the next core update, which is pretty standard advice from anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
It’s Not All Bad
Despite the fact that I saw early on that Clarke never bothered to update it, I kept reading because you never know what nuggets of wisdom you might find in an otherwise useless book. Also it was short. If it had been much longer, I probably would have bailed.
In this not-entirely-useless book I found the most useful chapter to be on SEO tools, even if it did recommend some keyword research tools that are notoriously inaccurate.
The tools I will use as a result of reading this book are
- XML Sitemaps for easily submitting a sitemap of your website to Google
- LinkClump for highlighting and migrating all the links from a web page onto a spreadsheet
- Crazy Egg to see which pages people are visiting on your site, which links they’re clicking, and how much content they’re consuming before clicking away
There were some other SEO tools designed to streamline the process of reaching out to editors to inquire about linkbuilding and guest blogging. They’re not cheap, but if they can do what Clarke claims they can do, they might be work the investment.
The other trick I learned from this book (and will definitely be implementing) was a process of looking for relevant backlinks. When targeting a specific keyword, Clarke recommends seeing which sites/pages are already ranking for that keyword. Then see which websites are linking back to that website/page. Reach out to those websites and ask for links to your website. Since they’ve already linked to a website on a similar topic, they’re likely to be inclined to agree. Pro tip: you can also use this with keywords related to your target keyword, not just the target keyword itself.
After this misadventure, I think it’s going to be a while before I’ll be reading any other SEO books recommended by the internet. I recently got some recommendations from real, live people I know, so I’m going to read those next.
As I write this, I just looked over at my Kindle, which is currently showing me an ad for SEO Workbook: Search Engine Optimization Success in Seven Steps by Jason McDonald. Apparently it has 78 reviews for an average rating of 4.5 stars. Given that Clarke’s book had a similar rating with many more reviews (I’m guessing they were paid reviews), this ad doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in me.
What are you reading these days? Any SEO books you would recommend?
If you’re looking for a book with evergreen SEO and content marketing strategy information, might I suggest this book?
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