Review: Get to the Top on Google

Search engine optimisation [SEO] involves making it easy for search engines to find your website or web content. According to David Viney, ranking highly with search engines is important because that is the way 90% of people find internet resources. The author also notes that 84% of searchers never make it past page two of Google and 65% never click on paid or sponsored results.

Google SEO Rank

The author focuses on Google because it has the biggest market share at 75% in Europe and North America and is forecast to be the largest advertiser by revenue within three years. However, whilst the focus is on Google SEO and achieving a high search engine ranking, the seven step process is widely applicable.

Seven Step SEO Process

The author has defined a seven step SEO process that has been used by the author with clients such as British Airways, Amazon and Microsoft:

1. Phrases that pay. Developing the customer proposition and how they will find the online presence. Keyword discovery, attractiveness, prominence, proximity and density
2. Courting the crawl. How Google finds a website, using sitemaps, managing site structure and navigation
3. Priming your pages. SEO art of page copywriting and asset optimisation. Handling search engine result pages and result snippets
4. Landing the links. Develop a link building campaign to establish importance and relevance of website. How Google ranks, off-page optimisation and avoiding Google penalties
5. Paying for position. 35% of searches do use sponsored links so the author covers selecting match drivers, Ad text and landing page optimisation and bid and campaign management
6. Making the map. Language and geographical optimisation, Google Earth and Google Maps and priming for local searches
7. Tracking and tuning. Google analytics, webmaster tools and tuning the campaign

 

SEO Case Study

Throughout the book an SEO case study is used of a fictional business that has a local US print shop presence and is developing an associated online business card printing service. Each of the seven steps is explained with this example and throughout the book the author points to many additional topics and resources including website validation, sitemap submission, domain brokers and tools, keyword tools, reciprocal link sites, directories, search engine submission, article sites, Web 2.0, lenses, wikis and tagging.

Read more on 

• Free SEO Tools
• Understanding Organic Search Engine Rankings
• Search Engine Optimization Definitions

Get to the Top on Google

This a very good book to understand more about SEO with Google. The writing style is clear and the book is packed with lots of information that will repay closer study. For a business planning a new online presence or for an existing online business this resource will help to optimise the website. Whilst there is a clear focus on Google a number of the SEO techniques and tools will be more widely applicable, however, in this case the book will have less value because it is Google centric.