The Art of SEO | Hacker News Reader

The Art of SEO

hn-books.com

"So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor" http://twitter.com/#!/drelabre/status/24646925328326657

OMFG - this is the worst seo book ever - and i know because i'm propably the only one who ever read it front to cover (during my sabbatical on a beach in mexico) there are four authors which republish their old blog posts mixed together by an editor who was obviously overwhelmed with the task. but it is not only mixed (with no way to find out who wrote what) it is also repetitive (the same topic up to 5 times) and unstructured (soemtimes there are refferences like: read more about that in this chapter, but then the whole topic is discussed again nothingtheless) ... oh yeah some of it is factually false, with refernces to blogposts wich talks about something completely different.

the truth is: this book stands for everything that is wrong with SEO as a profession. SEO as a profession is 80% bullshit and 20% actionable knowledge. this book celebrates the 80%.

the biggest letdown is, that its published by oreily but way below their quality standard they are known for.

The art is there is no art. It's called "making useful stuff that people can find." I always felt like a criminal when people paid me loads of money to do this :(

1.) People pay public relations firms a lot for press coverage. And they pay Google ~ $30 billion a year for AdWords ads. If SEO is way cheaper (and it typically is) then what makes it overpriced (when similar traffic streams indicate that rates should be, if anything, higher)?

2.) Surely you were not knee deep in link building if you felt overpaid. ;)

The title of this post should really be: The Art of Affiliate Marketing

Good show!

Not sure what you mean? Because the guy who runs hn-books adds an affiliate code to amzn?

(this is what the book url expands to: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596518862?ie=UTF8&tag=...)

EDIT: The first line on the homepage states this quite clearly: external links to amazon are through their affiliate program

I think it's general Internet etiquette that when you are referring a community of people (that you are a member of) to a specific product though your own site, you don't pass in a referral code. It shows that the product you are talking about is actually recommended, rather than a quick money maker for yourself.

I don't have a problem with the website in general, especially if I found it through Google. But, what's to say that 10 other HN'ers don't post a book review tomorrow with an affiliate link? Because, after all, it's profitable. Who cares if the book is good or not?

Given the OP's unofficial librarian status, I don't think it's a major offense in this case. But, I didn't find that out until after I posted my first comment.

It's a good book to use as reference. Such as should I do x or y. Easy to read, and with well explained examples.

Great book to sit along with Web Analytics 2.0.

yeah you open it one page which tells you you should care about x, but you do not like x, so you open it on another random page which tells you to do y and you like y better so you do y.

seriously this book is shit, if you see an SEO mention it as his reference run for cover, take your business with you

It hurts me deeply that HN has become a stage for the SEO circus. Wasn't "Spinh" enough?

Deleted comment

I don't think anyone is going to say "don't make your website search-friendly because you're heading down the path of SEO" or anything like that. SEO has a negative connotation because of all the jerks associated with it, not because some of the SEO stuff doesn't make sense or isn't worthwhile.

For example, to the world at large, a "hacker" is "a bad guy", whereas here on hn, it means precisely the opposite. SEO is sort of like that. To be a self-described "SEO"-person or something means you're probably one of the jerks ruining it for everybody. That doesn't mean SEO, or at least parts of it, is a bad thing.

Edit: Above post was deleted while I was writing mine. It basically defended the link saying "SEO is a necessary part of any startup."

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