In this day and age where blogs provide fast and up to date information about developments in the industry are conventional publication mediums such as print seem to be archaic.
But print is not just dead yet. As a matter of fact, blogging might be popular with the influencers and early adopters so is the general population still doing it the old ways. Believe it or not, but books are still being read and written by people. Several of our colleagues obviously agree and actually wrote books for the old fashioned.
I also still like books and own and continue to buy plenty of them. I like to hold a book in my hands and take it to places where you cannot take your RSS reader (or could, but don’t want to).
For the normal people and the people who have forgotten how it used to be, I would like to introduce some books about internet marketing that were recently published. If you one of those who have forgotten, I recommend to get one yourself and try it out. You might enjoy it.
The first book is called simply “Search Engine Optimization“, your visual blueprint for effective Internet marketing and was written by Kristopher B. Jones, CEO of PepperJam. Kris is well known in the industry and considered an authority not only in the search marketing community, but among internet marketers is general, including affiliate marketers and people in display advertising. I think the title of the book was not well chosen, because it is not only about organic search engine optimization, but about marketing your business and website in general.
The book covers paid search advertising, affiliate marketing, public relations, web analytics and more, basically everything that is important for a successful online presents. That Kris has experience across the multiple channels of internet marketing, from his business as fully integrated internet marketing agency shines through in his book.
Unique about the book is also how it is designed. It is geared towards the visual folks like myself and uses a tremendous amount of pictures to show things instead of just using words to explain. Virtually every page has a screenshot or illustration and is an integrated part of the book, beyond the simple use as decoration or reinforcement of the written text.
The next book is titled “Radically Transparent“, Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online and was written by Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim and Judy Strauss.
Andy Beal is a SEO and fellow blogger who specialized in social media optimization, reputation management and public relations. He is like Kris Jones a frequent speaker at search marketing conference, such as Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld’s PubCon.
As the subtitle states, his book is primarily about monitoring and managing of your personal, your professional or your company’s reputation online where it focuses heavily on using search engine optimization and marketing techniques as tools to accomplish your goals.
It also provides advice and recommendations for how to approach the social media space as a business in order to reduce the risks and possible problems that will arise, if you jump into this area of marketing without being prepared and ready for it.
The power of social media and the benefits your customers and your company can get out from it are a reward that is worth the risks. Yes, it has risks and it is impossible to eliminate all of them, but that does not mean that it cannot be done. Just eliminate the risks that you can eliminate and be prepared for the things that can happen and impossible to prevent for sure. My recent post titled “Social Media Guide for Big Brand Corporate Businesses” here at Search Engine Journal touches on this subject as well and worth checking out.
Unlike my post is the book much more practical and hands on to be used and applied in your daily business. My overview gives you the general idea, but Andy’s book provides you the stuff to get you actually going with it.
The third book I would like to introduce to you is called “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” and was written by Brian Clifton, who actually works for Google itself, as a team leader for the Google Analytics team for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is basically information from the source itself.
You could expect a sales pitch for the Google product, but this is not the case here. Well, there is also not too much profit to be made from writing a self serving book that is designed to sell the product, because Google Analytics is a free web analytics solution that does not cost a dime to use.
The book is a hands-on guide for how to use Google Analytics and in my opinion more geared towards the webmasters who have some technical understanding, basic knowledge in HTML and JavaScript and the folks who are doing the actual implementation and configuration of the web analytics solution.
It is full of specific and practical tips and uses real world examples to not only demonstrate the “how-to”, but to illustrate and explain the “why-to” as well. It includes source code samples, which are often virtually ready to be used for your own site.
The fourth book I would like to talk about is titled “Landing Page Optimization“, The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions and was written by Tim Ash of SiteTuners.com, a web analytics and site optimization service who does landing page optimization among other things for his living.
It is a real-world and practical guide to landing page testing and optimization without any fluff. It is really for the folks who do the testing and the ones who have to sell it to their boss and need to know about the details of the process of landing page testing, what is involved, what are the risks and how it should be approached and why.
It is very useful and complimentary to the “Landing Page Handbook” by MarketingSherpa, the $500 “bible” for folks who do serious landing page optimization for their business.
They also overlap in a few areas. This means that it is also a good buy for people who are not doing enough business that involves using landing pages to justify and recoup the $500 investment in the MarketingSherpa book. It’s not exactly an alternative, but it is a start that cost a lot less.
If you are doing serious business with landing pages, I recommend getting both books. The return (increase in conversion = increase in business and profits) you will get out from it will pay for the initial investment quickly and then over and over again for the time to come.
Okay, those two are not that new anymore. They came out last year, but I still wanted to introduce you to them, because I think that you might like them.
The first of them came out last Fall and is called “Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer’s Guide to SEO” and was written by Cristian Darie, a seasoned writer of books for web and database developers and Jaimie Sirovich from SEOEggHead.com.
I wrote about its sister book for PHP developers last year on multiple occasions and could repeat what I said back then. The only thing you would have to do is to substitute “.NET” with “PHP”, “Apache” with “IIS”, “Linux” with “Windows Server”, “MySQL” with “MS SQL Server” and “.HTAccess” and “Mod-Rewrite” with “ISAPI Filter for URL Rewrites for IIS”. The rest could stay the same.
Please see this post and this one at ReveNews.com and this post of mine here at Search Engine Journal.
Take away from all three posts: If you are a web developer who wants to learn about SEO, get one or the other and if you have working web developers for you, get them a copy, because it will help to make your live easier. It’s a nice gift to your customers, if you are a SEO shop. You not only make friends with an important department at the clients side, it will also safe you time and money, with the customers IT department with an understanding of what you are doing and why on your side.
The last book is not really about internet marketing. It is, but it also isn’t. It is more about the right mindset to get things done others believe to be hard or impossible to do, although in reality that is not the case. It is actually fairly easy most of the time, but it requires the right mindset. Getting into the right mindset to do just that is what the following book is all about.
It is titled “Simpology“, the Simple Science of Getting What You Want and was written by Mark Joyner. I suggest this book to anybody and not just internet marketers. It is also not just for entrepreneurs like me, even if it appears to be written for that special group of people.
It is really something for anybody and if not useful, then at least entertaining, entrepreneur or not. If reading is not your thing at all, I would suggest to watch the movie “The Secret“, which talks about the same thing in a different way, but has the same goal and purpose as the book by Mark.
Disclaimer: I own all mentioned books and also paid for almost all of them myself, except for the PHP for web developers (I paid for the ASP.NET one though) and the MarketingSherpa Landing Page Handbook. I was not paid nor gained any other financial benefits from publishing my reviews (I hope that I will get a free copy next time though hehe, just kidding, the $20-$30 for each of the books were money well spent). I provided some help and feedback to Jaimie and Cristian while they were working on their two books, but don’t gain any benefits from potential sales that are a result of me endorsing them.
Carsten Cumbrowski is an entrepreneur, internet marketing straregy consultant with a wide range of internet marketing and also web development experience. He operates a free internet marketing resources website at Cumbrowski.com.
