10 books you should read to save your SEO JOB
Not too long ago the SEO community was set ablaze when shoemoney said SEO has no future, and I agree to some extent - Graywolf already covered that people still don’t follow the basics, and a few other major reasons why SEO DOES HAVE A FUTURE which I agree with 100%, but won’t re-hash he covered that well. The argument that is still NOT being talked about is the fact that shoemoney was somewhat right, that led me too this post!
Hey I LOVE SEO, I think you all know that. Fortunately I also LOVE marketing. As a result I read a LOT of marketing books. I recently got thinking…that SEO today really requires a lot of MARKETING savvy, not as much TECH savvy. I spoke about this in a recent presentation at the Affiliate Summit (yes I’ll be speaking in Boston!) where I walked the audience through the progression of SEO from needing tech savvy (1998) to marketing savvy (2003) - You can see the slides here:
What I was trying to illustrate back 4 months ago was that yes, SEO, as we know it is dying for some types of SEOs. For most of those SEO’s who have relied on TECH instead of MARKETING are going to really feel the pain when they can’t understand how to create things of value, that people want, fill a need, have a chance to go viral, CONVERT, is trackable, is easy to use, and respects people’s privacy.
Here are the 10 books I think you should be reading to be a good SEO:
• Meatball Sundae
• Selling the Invisible
• Don’t make me think
• Wikinomics
• The Tipping point
• Microtrends
• Call to action
• Web analytics an hour per day
• SuperCrunchers
• Groundswell
Please let me know of others!
thanks for the book list
Comment by seo india
May 24th, 2008 @ 2:12 am
Had no idea you spoke at ASE, Wil - cool stuff.
I read Meatball Sundae, which was awesome, and Web Analytics an Hour a Day, which was not. Quite average, and thus, dissapointing, from as bright a guy as Avinash.
Looking to read Call to Action and Wikinomics, dunno bout the others.
Another 2 must reads are
- Web Design 4 ROI by Lance Loveday and Sandy Niehaus, which is the BIBLE of conversion.
- the SEO Book by Aaron Wall (duh)
Comment by Gab Goldenberg
June 1st, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Gab thanks for stopping by! Web Design for ROI sounds like something I should look into. Definitely let me know what you thin k of call to action…I really liked it a lot.
Comment by wil
June 1st, 2008 @ 8:18 pm
I’m excited to see MicroTrend listed here - one of the best books I’ve read all year, and so relevant to SEO in terms of targeting these emerging communities shaping our country. The Malcolm Gladwell book I actually enjoyed more was “Blink”, definitely worthy of #11. Thanks for the list!
Comment by Monica Wright
July 25th, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
@monica - Glad you liked the list. I read blink too, I guess blink would speak more to how quickly people decided if they like your site after you have driven them to your site via a search engine. I liked blink, but I will say that after about the mid way point, I found the book to be a little repetitive. I think I was comparing it to the tipping point though, which is HANDS DOWN one of my all time favorites.
Comment by wil
July 28th, 2008 @ 10:17 am