Book Review: Visual Search Engine Optimization

This is a guest book review by Michael Weigand, a PPC guru at my company, Portent.
Visual® Search Engine Optimization, penned by Pepperjam founder Kristopher Jones, is an awesome take-off point for anyone looking to make major site improvements for SEO. Anyone that can build an affiliate empire the way Jones has should have some insight, and it’s obvious he does.
Kristopher hammers home doing keyword research correctly. He offers up a bevy of useful research tools and suggests drilling down to the most targeted terms for your business. Always a prudent methodology for immediate impact.
This book really shines in the “Extra” sections, found at the end of each topic. Jones makes most of his best commentary there – from “addressing canonical issues between www and non-www pages on your domain” to “mixing up your anchor text when acquiring backlinks.” If you were to only read those, you’d still take away quite a few useful pieces of wisdom from this tome.
Where this SEO reference gets a little iffy is on link building and social media tactics. With sections on networking with MySpace, obtaining directory listings, and randomly fishing for one-way links, it’d probably distract beginners from more beneficial strategies. Jones does admit, though, that establishing direct conversations with bloggers is a much better way to get truly great links.
Bottom line: This text does a fantastic job educating and providing savvy SEO insights that even non-technical folks can grasp.