I’m always willing to oblige when asked for some advice on a subject for a book, blog or whatnot and as such was happy to offer up some tips when asked by author Silvia O’Dwyer to answer a couple questions for her now published book “500 SEO Tips: Essential Strategies To Bulldoze Through Google’s Rankings, Increase Traffic and Go Viral”. When it was published I of course had to read it and thought I’d give it a review here in our blog. I should note that as one whose advice was sought and who was quoted (in chapter 11 if you’re wondering) I may have a bit of a bias so take it for what you will.
In reviewing the full scope of the book I found, as one tends to in SEO publications, a mix of good and not so good advice. There were a lot of decent takeaways for people just looking to get their feet wet or DIY folks who can’t afford an agency but who want to at least improve their site. Areas like keyword research are well explained and include some good tools and approaches. At the same time I have to worry when I see a recommendation to use MyBlogGuest knowing the site was hit with a massive penalty back in March 2014.
That said, there are a lot of decent tips and strategies outlined in the book. Thus is my dilemma, if someone new to SEO took the advice within they may do well with a lot of it but if they don’t know to skip a few of the areas they may find themselves undoing all that hard work with just one of the strategies. Of course, the same can be said for the majority of advice related to SEO.
As far as recommending it, for folks new to SEO I would with the specific note that with this book as with most out there, do your research. Before engaging in any tactic or purchasing any service do some searching or ask someone more experienced for verification. Engaging in the strategies takes a lot of time and I know you may want to jump right but verifying you’re doing it right is worth it’s weight in gold and if you’re really impatient – spend some time writing for your own site and create some good compelling copy. If nothing else, it’ll save you from shooting yourself in the foot.