The question “What are the best books about SEO?” usually gets answered with either it depends or there are no good SEO books. In fact, there isn’t a ton of worthy books on the subject, because it’s such a quickly moving target. However, there are a few that are worth reading in addition to the many SEO blogs you should be following. They are great for both beginners and advanced SEOs, anyone (whether you are a specialist or a business owner) can learn something from them or dust off some long-forgotten knowledge. Without further ado, let me present our ultimate totally-worth-it compilation!
Article Contents
The best SEO books everyone should read
Some books are good, some books are great, and some are simply the ones you can’t miss. In honor of the best of the best SEO books, we’re dedicating a separate section to the SEO books you can not miss.
The Art of SEO (3rd edition – 2014)
If you could only read one book about SEO let it be this one! This staple of search engine optimization books is considered an organic ranking bible. It gives an overview of pretty much every little detail there is to know about SEO. Although a little dated this 2014 edition covers all the basics. We can probably expect an updated 4th version soon, as it’s already been almost 6 years since the latest edition.
The Art of SEO Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Who Should Read This Book
- Safari® Books Online
- How to Contact Us
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Search: Reflecting Consciousness and Connecting Commerce
- The Mission of Search Engines
- The Market Share of Search Engines
- The Human Goals of Searching
- Who Searches and What Do They Search For?
- Determining Searcher Intent: A Challenge for Search Marketers and Search Engines
- Navigational Queries
- Informational Queries
- Transactional Queries
- Adaptive Search
- Searcher Intent
- How People Search
- How Search Engines Drive Ecommerce
- The Mobile Shift
- The History of Eye Tracking: How Users Scan Results Pages
- Click Tracking: How Users Click on Results (Organic Versus Paid)
- Distribution of Search Results and Traffic
- Conclusion
- 2. Search Engine Basics
- Understanding Search Engine Results
- Understanding the Layout of Search Results Pages
- Understanding How Vertical Results Fit into the SERPs
- Google’s Knowledge Graph
- Algorithm-Based Ranking Systems: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking
- Crawling and Indexing
- Retrieval and Ranking
- Evaluating Content on a Web Page
- Understanding What Content Search Engines Can “See” on a Web Page
- Determining Searcher Intent and Delivering Relevant, Fresh Content
- Document Analysis and Semantic Connectivity
- Content Quality and User Engagement
- Link Analysis
- Evaluating Social Media Signals
- Problem Words, Disambiguation, and Diversity
- Why These Algorithms Sometimes Fail
- The Knowledge Graph
- Analyzing Ranking Factors
- Negative Ranking Factors
- Other Ranking Factors
- Using Advanced Search Techniques
- Advanced Google Search Operators
- Bing Advanced Search Operators
- More Advanced Search Operator Techniques
- Vertical Search Engines
- Vertical Search from the Major Search Engines
- Universal Search/Blended Search
- Country-Specific Search Engines
- Optimizing for Specific Countries
- Conclusion
- Understanding Search Engine Results
- 3. SEO Planning: Customizing Your Strategy
- Strategic Goals SEO Practitioners Can Fulfill
- Visibility (Branding)
- Website Traffic
- High Return on Investment
- Every SEO Strategy Should Be Customized
- Understanding Search Engine Traffic and Visitor Intent
- Developing an SEO Plan Prior to Site Development
- Business Factors That Impact Your SEO Strategy
- Understanding Your Audience and Finding Your Niche
- Mapping Your Products and Services
- Understanding That Content Is King
- Segmenting Your Site’s Audience
- Understanding Context: Market Competitiveness
- SEO for Raw Traffic
- SEO for Ecommerce Sales
- SEO for Mindshare and Branding
- SEO for Lead Generation and Direct Marketing
- SEO for Reputation Management
- SEO for Ideological Influence
- Advanced Methods for Planning and Evaluation
- SWOT Analysis
- SWOT Guidelines
- SMART Objectives
- Conclusion
- Strategic Goals SEO Practitioners Can Fulfill
- 4. SEO Implementation: First Stages
- The Importance of Planning
- Identifying the Site Development Process and Players
- Development Platform and Information Architecture
- Technology Decisions
- Structural Decisions
- Mobile Sites and Mobile Apps
- Single-Page Applications
- Auditing an Existing Site to Identify SEO Problems
- Elements of an Audit
- The Importance of Keyword Reviews
- Keyword Cannibalization
- Example: Fixing an Internal Linking Problem
- Server and Hosting Issues
- Identifying Current Server Statistics Software and Gaining Access
- Web Analytics
- Log file Tracking
- Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
- Determining Top Competitors
- Identifying Spam
- Seeking the Best
- Uncovering Their Secrets
- Assessing Historical Progress
- Timeline of Site Changes
- Types of Site Changes That Can Affect SEO
- Previous SEO Work
- Benchmarking Current Indexing Status
- Benchmarking Organic Rankings
- Benchmarking Current Traffic Sources and Volume
- Leveraging Business Assets for SEO
- Other Domains You Own/Control
- Relationships On and Off the Web
- Content or Data You’ve Never Put Online
- Customers Who Have Had a Positive Experience
- Followers, Friends, and Fans
- Conclusion
- 5. Keyword Research
- The Theory Behind Keyword Research
- Thinking Strategically
- Understanding the Long Tail of the Keyword Demand Curve
- Understanding the Impact of Google Hummingbird
- Understanding Keyword “Not Provided” and Co-Occurrence Analysis
- Traditional Approaches: Domain Expertise and Site Content Analysis
- Including Competitive Analysis
- Integrating Keyword Research, Co-Occurrence Analysis, and Knowledge of User Intent
- Keyword Research Options
- Keyword Research Data from Search Engines
- Keyword Research Data from Tools
- Keyword Research Data Analysis
- Ad Campaign Runs and Third-Party Search Data
- Landing Page Optimization
- Leveraging the Long Tail of Keyword Demand
- Extracting Terms from Relevant Web Pages
- Mining Keyword Research Tools
- Identifying Long-Tail Patterns
- Applying Editorial Content Strategies for Long-Tail Targeting
- Applying User-Generated Content Strategies for Long-Tail Targeting
- Trending, Seasonality, and Seasonal Fluctuations in Keyword Demand
- Conclusion
- The Theory Behind Keyword Research
- 6. Developing an SEO-Friendly Website
- Making Your Site Accessible to Search Engines
- Indexable Content
- Spiderable Link Structures
- XML Sitemaps
- Creating an Optimal Information Architecture
- The Importance of a Logical, Category-Based Flow
- Site Architecture Design Principles
- Flat Versus Deep Architecture
- Search-Friendly Site Navigation
- Root Domains, Subdomains, and Microsites
- When to Use a Subfolder
- When to Use a Subdomain
- When to Use a Separate Root Domain
- Microsites
- When to Use a TLD Other Than .com
- Optimization of Domain Names/URLs
- Optimizing Domains
- Picking the Right URLs
- Mobile Friendliness
- Keyword Targeting
- HTML Title Tags
- Meta Description Tags
- Heading Tags
- Document Text
- Image Filenames and alt Attributes
- Boldface Text
- Keyword Cannibalization
- Keyword Targeting in Content Management Systems and Automatically Generated Content
- Effective Keyword Targeting by Content Creators
- Long-Tail Keyword Targeting
- Content Optimization
- Content Structure
- CSS and Semantic Markup
- Content Uniqueness and Depth
- Content Themes
- Duplicate Content Issues
- Consequences of Duplicate Content
- How Search Engines Identify Duplicate Content
- Copyright Infringement
- How to Avoid Duplicate Content on Your Own Site
- Controlling Content with Cookies and Session IDs
- What’s a Cookie?
- What Are Session IDs?
- How Do Search Engines Interpret Cookies and Session IDs?
- Why Would You Want to Use Cookies or Session IDs to Control Search Engine Access?
- Content Delivery and Search Spider Control
- Cloaking and Segmenting Content Delivery
- Showing Different Content to Engines and Visitors
- Displaying Different Content to Search Engines Versus Visitors
- Redirects
- Why and When to Redirect
- Good and Bad Redirects
- Methods for URL Redirecting and Rewriting
- How to Redirect a Home Page Index File Without Looping
- Content Management System Issues
- CMS Selection
- Third-Party CMS Add-Ons
- Flash Coding Best Practices
- Best Practices for Multilanguage/Country Targeting
- How to Target a Specific Country
- Problems with Using Your Existing Domain
- The Two Major Approaches
- Multiple-Language Issues
- Semantic Search
- Google’s Hummingbird
- Semantic Search and SEO
- Entities and Semantic Search
- Structured Data
- Schema.org
- Overview
- How to Use Schema.org
- Summary
- Google Authorship and Author Authority
- A Brief History of Google Authorship
- Why Did Google End Support for rel=“author”?
- Is Author Authority Dead for Google?
- Google+ Authors in Personalized Search
- The Future of Author Authority at Google
- Author Authority
- Google’s Publisher Tag
- Google’s Knowledge Graph and the Knowledge Vault
- Overview of Changes in Search Complexity
- Fair Use?
- How the Knowledge Vault Works
- The Future of the Knowledge Vault
- Conclusion
- Making Your Site Accessible to Search Engines
- 7. Content Marketing
- How Links Historically Influenced Search Engine Rankings
- The Original PageRank Algorithm
- Additional Factors That Influence Link Value
- How Search Engines Use Links
- Further Refining How Search Engines Judge Links
- Additional Link Evaluation Criteria
- How Search Engines Determine a Link’s Value
- Creating Content That Attracts Links
- How Are Links Earned?
- How Can Sites Approach Getting Links?
- Introduction to Content Marketing
- Using Content to Attract Links
- Understanding Content Marketing Basics
- Customizing Your Content Types to Your Audience
- Implementing Content Marketing Strategies
- Developing Content That Works
- Brainstorming Content Ideas and Being Creative
- Speedstorming
- Getting Creative Help
- Repurposing Content
- Understanding What Makes Content High Quality
- Integrating Emotional Triggers, Titles, and Images
- Leveraging the Power of Memes
- Measuring Engagement in Content Marketing
- Choosing the Right Content Marketing Strategy
- Identifying Types of Sites That Might Link to a Site Like Yours
- Placing a Value on the Sites
- Segmenting Your Audience, Identifying Personas, and Targeting Content
- Putting It All Together
- Types of Content Marketing Campaigns
- Guest Posting
- Content Syndication
- Link-Worthy or Viral Content
- User-Generated Content
- Building an Audience
- Get to Know Other People’s Audiences
- Leverage Influencers and Influencer Marketing
- Get Active in Social Media
- Build Offline Relationships
- Relationships and Outreach
- Building Relationships with Influencers
- Creating a Value Proposition for a Relationship
- Using Direct Email Pitches Effectively
- Other Ways to Earn Links
- Web Directories
- Manual Social Media Link Creation
- Gray Hat/Black Hat
- Awards and Badges
- Customer Discount/Incentives
- How Search Engines Fight Link Spam
- Google’s Penguin Algorithm
- Other Algorithmic Approaches to Fighting Link Spam
- Negative Link Building
- Unnatural Links Messages
- Other Search Engine Courses of Action
- Social Networking for Links
- Blogging for Links
- Leveraging Major Social Media Platforms
- Using Social Media Networking Effectively: Dos and Don’ts
- Using YouTube Successfully for Content Marketing
- Implementing Guest Posting Successfully
- Putting It All Together
- Conclusion
- How Links Historically Influenced Search Engine Rankings
- 8. How Social Media and User Data Play a Rule in Search Results and Rankings
- Correlation Between Social Signals and Google Rankings
- What Is the Value of Social Signals?
- Bing’s Experiments with Social Signals
- Does Google Use Facebook as a Ranking Signal?
- Does Google Use Twitter as a Ranking Signal?
- Does Google Use Google+ as a Ranking Signal?
- Google+ Personalization
- Google+ Posts in the Search Results
- Google+ Brand Pages in the Search Results
- Google+ Impact on Nonpersonalized Rankings of Content
- Study on Google+ as a Ranking Factor
- How Might Google Use Google+ as a Ranking Factor?
- The Indirect Influence of Social Media Marketing
- Monitoring, Measuring, and Improving Social Media Marketing: Best Practices
- Claiming Key Profiles
- Deciding on a New Social Network
- Tracking Social Media
- User Engagement as a Measure of Search Quality
- How Google and Bing Cullect Engagement Metrics
- Potential User Engagement Signals
- Voting Mechanisms
- Document Analysis
- Poor Editorial Quality
- Reading Level
- Keyword Stuffing/Lack of Synonyms
- Ad Density and Offensive Ads
- Sameness
- Page Speed
- Optimizing User Experience to Improve SEO
- Step 1: Build a Survey
- Step 2: Send It to Your Customers/Potential Customers
- Step 3: Record Responses and Leverage Them to Build What the People Want
- Additional Social Media Resources
- Conclusion
- 9. Panda, Penguin, and Penalties
- Diagnosing the Cause of a Traffic Loss
- Summary of Major Google Algorithms
- Panda
- Target Areas of Panda
- Importance of Diversity in Rankings
- Rule of Authority in Rankings
- Impact of Any Weak Content on Rankings
- Path to Recovery
- Penguin
- Target Areas of Penguin
- Path to Recovery
- Penalties
- Types of Manual Penalties
- Links Google Does Not Like
- Link Cleanup Process
- Sources of Data
- Using Tools
- The Link Removal Process
- Conclusion
- 10. Mobile, Local, and Vertical SEO
- The Mobile Landscape
- SEO for Mobile
- App SEO: Deep Linking and Indexing for Mobile Search
- App Deep Linking
- App Indexing
- Optimizing for Vertical Search
- Universal Search = Blended Search
- The Opportunity Unleashed
- Optimizing for Local Search
- Local Listing Submissions
- Google My Business
- Google Knowledge Graph Carousel
- Bing Places for Business
- Yahoo! Local
- Business Website Optimization for Local Search
- Optimizing for Image Search
- Image Optimization Tips
- Optimizing for Google Shopping Search
- Submitting a Product Feed
- Optimizing a Product Feed
- Promoting Products in AdWords
- Reporting Results of Shopping Ads
- Optimizing for Blog Search
- Structural Blog Optimizations
- Optimizing Your Anchor Text
- Sticky Posts
- Author Profile Pages
- Links
- Optimizing for News Search: Google News
- Acceptance Criteria
- Application Process
- Paywalls and Subscription Sites
- Google News Publisher Center
- Technical Requirements
- Thumbnail Images in Google News
- Recrawling
- Google News Sitemaps
- Videos in Google News
- Editor’s Picks
- Optimizing for Video/Multimedia Search
- Video SEO for YouTube
- Video SEO for Google
- Conclusion
- The Mobile Landscape
- 11. Tracking Results and Measuring Success
- Why Measuring Success Is Essential to the SEO Process
- The Tracking Cycle: Produce, Launch, Measure, Refine
- Establishing a Proper Baseline
- Using Analytics as a Business Case for SEO
- Measuring Search Traffic
- Basic Overview
- Selecting the Right Analytics Package
- Extracting Valuable SEO Data in Web Analytics
- Number of pages getting search traffic
- Segmenting Search Traffic
- Referring Sites
- Using Custom Analytics Dashboards
- Taking a Deeper Look at Action Tracking
- Separating the Analytics Wheat from the Chaff
- Tying SEO to Conversion and ROI
- Managing Attribution
- Setting Up Analytics Software to Track Conversions
- Segmenting Campaigns and SEO Efforts by Conversion Rate
- Increasing Conversion
- Determining Project ROI
- Competitive and Diagnostic Search Metrics
- Search Engine and Competitive Metrics
- Site Indexing Data
- Link-Based Tracking of Content Marketing
- Ranking
- Shelf space
- SEO Platforms
- Crawl Errors
- Tracking the Blogosphere
- Tracking Your Blog(s)
- Search Engine Robot Traffic Analysis
- Web Traffic Comparison
- Temporal Link Growth Measurements
- Key Performance Indicators for Long-Tail SEO
- Duplicate Content
- Other Third-Party Tools
- MozBar
- SEO Quake
- SEO for Firefox
- SpyFu
- SEMrush
- Rio SEO Search Analytics
- Rio SEO Website Optimizer
- Searchmetrics Essentials
- Conclusion
- Why Measuring Success Is Essential to the SEO Process
- 12. Domain Changes, Redesigns, and Troubleshooting
- The Basics of Moving Content
- Large-Scale Content Moves
- Mapping Content Moves
- Expectations for Content Moves
- Maintaining Search Engine Visibility During and After a Site Redesign
- Maintaining Search Engine Visibility During and After Domain Name Changes
- Unique Challenges of Domain Name Changes
- Pre-Move Preparations
- Changing Servers
- Monitoring After Your Server Move
- Hidden Content
- Identifying Content That Search Engines Don’t See
- Identifying the Cause of Non-Spidering
- Identifying Hidden Content That May Be Viewed as Spam
- Spam Filtering and Penalties
- Low-Quality Domains and Spam Sites
- Spam Reports
- Duplicate Content
- Basic Rules for Spam-Free SEO
- Search Engine Penalties and Reconsideration Requests
- Content Theft
- Changing SEO Vendors or Staff Members
- Potential Problems with SEO Staff Changes
- SEO Documentation for Actions and Progress
- SEO Documentation for Rapid Training
- Cleanup and Auditing
- Conclusion
- The Basics of Moving Content
- 13. SEO Education and Research
- SEO Research and Search Performance Analysis
- SEO Resources
- SEO Testing
- Analysis of Top-Ranking Sites and Pages
- Analysis of Algorithmic Differentiation Across Engines and Search Types
- The Importance of Experience
- Competitive Analysis
- Content Analysis
- Internal Link Structure and Site Architecture
- External Link Attraction Analysis
- What Is Their SEO Strategy?
- Competitive Analysis Summary
- Using Competitive Link Analysis Tools
- Competitive Analysis for Those with a Big Budget
- Using Search Engine–Supplied SEO Tools
- Search Engine Tools for Webmasters
- The SEO Industry on the Web
- Blogs
- SEO News Outlets, Communities, and Forums
- Communities in Social Networks
- Participation in Conferences and Organizations
- Conclusion
- SEO Research and Search Performance Analysis
- 14. SEO Support: In-House, External, or Both?
- The Business of SEO
- Understand Your Market Opportunity
- Get Buy-In Across the Organization
- Lay the Groundwork
- Motivate Resources That Don’t Share Your Goals to Help You
- Progress Through the Stages of SEO Maturity
- Building an SEO team
- Using In-House SEO Talent Versus Outsourced Support: Dynamics and Challenges
- The Value of In-House SEO
- The Value of Outsourced SEO Support
- The Case for Working with an Outside Expert
- How to Best Leverage Outside Help
- How to Implement Your Expert’s Recommendations
- How to Integrate SEO Knowledge in the Organization
- The Impact of Site Complexity on SEO Workload
- Solutions for Small Organizations
- Developing the In-House SEO Specialist
- Making the Most of Limited Resources or Budgets
- Solutions for Large Organizations
- Contracting for Specialist Knowledge and Experience
- Applying SEO Recommendations Intelligently
- Hiring SEO Talent
- Selecting the Right SEO Person
- Pitching the Person
- Making the Offer
- Selecting an SEO Firm/Consultant
- Getting the Process Started
- Preparing a Request for Proposal
- Communicating with Candidate SEO Firms
- Making the Decision
- Mixing In-House SEO with Outside SEO Help
- Building a Culture of SEO into Your Organization
- Conclusion
- The Business of SEO
- 15. An Evolving Art Form: The Future of SEO
- The Ongoing Evolution of Search
- The Growth of Search Complexity
- Google’s Dominance
- More Searchable Content and Content Types
- Engines Will Make Crawling Improvements
- Engines Are Getting New Content Sources
- Multimedia Is Becoming Indexable
- More Personalized, Localized, and User-Influenced Search
- User Intent
- User Interactions
- New Search Patterns
- Growing Reliance on the Cloud
- Increasing Importance of Local, Mobile, and Voice Search
- Local Search
- Mobile Search
- Voice Recognition Search
- Increased Market Saturation and Competition
- SEO as an Enduring Art Form
- The Future of Semantic Search and the Knowledge Graph
- Conclusion
- The Ongoing Evolution of Search
- Glossary
- Index
Ultimate Guide to Link Building (2nd edition – 2020)
Recently, a second edition of the popular book on link building has been published, this is a must-read for everyone looking to up their game and get inspired for their next link building campaign.
Ultimate Guide to Link Building Table of Contents
- Remembering Eric Ward
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword by Mike Grehan, CMO and Managing Director of Acronym
- Introduction by Ken McGaffin, Head of Marketing at Majestic
- CHAPTER 1
- A Brief Introduction to Search, Links, and Link Building
- A Brief History of Links and Search Engines
- Enter Google
- CHAPTER 2
- What Makes a Website Link-Worthy?
- Useful Content Earns Links
- What Is a Link-Worthy Site?
- CHAPTER 3
- Link-Building Campaign Design
- Planning Campaign Scope: Six Factors that Impact Campaign Design
- Hire (or Be) a Link Strategist
- CHAPTER 4
- Effective Link-Building Campaign Metrics
- Link Building for Increasing Search Engine Rankings
- Link Building as Market Engagement
- CHAPTER 5
- Linkable Assets
- Linkable Asset Analysis
- Common Linkable Asset Categories
- Identifying Competitor and Other Market-Determined Linkable Assets
- Identifying and Evaluating Your Existing Linkable Assets
- CHAPTER 6
- Link-Opportunity Types
- Going From Linkable Assets to Link-Opportunity Types
- Common Link-Opportunity Types
- CHAPTER 7
- Conducting a Link-Opportunity Analysis for Your Keyword Space
- Know Your Market-Defining Keywords (MDKWs)
- Design Queries for Each Opportunity Type
- Analyzing Your Results and Simple Recalibrations
- CHAPTER 8
- Link Prospecting
- Traits of an Opportunity Prospector
- Link-Prospecting Methods
- Seven Types of Keywords for Link-Prospecting Queries
- Anatomy of a Productive Link-Prospecting Query
- Competitor Backlink Prospecting
- Automating Your Link Prospecting with RSS Aggregation
- CHAPTER 9
- List-Scrape Prospecting for Link Builders
- List Hunting
- Brainstorm a Relevant Pitch
- Scrape the Blog List
- Outreach
- CHAPTER 10
- Prospecting for Blogs and Content Ideas Using Auto-Complete Suggestions
- Audience Research: Content Title Analysis
- CHAPTER 11
- Qualifying Link Prospects
- Qualifying Link Prospects Based on Available Metrics
- Manually Making Prospect Qualifications
- Tools for Faster Manual Qualification
- 55 Link-Opportunity Qualifiers
- CHAPTER 12
- What Is Link Trust?
- Spotting Signs of Trust
- How to Get Tier One Links
- CHAPTER 13
- Building Relationships
- The Preciprocation Concept
- Building Preciprocated Relationships into Links
- Develop Your Content Promotion Network (to Tap into Others’ Networks)
- Overpreciprocating: The Dangers of Always Being the “Platform”
- CHAPTER 14
- Analyzing Market Pains to Create Highly Linkable Content
- How-Tos, Guides, and Other Informational Wonders for DIYers and Curious Prospects
- Identifying Linkable Content in Your Market
- How Reciprocal Links Can Be Viable
- Linkable Content Can Generate Conversions, Too!
- Engaging Your Internal Thought Leaders and Subject-Matter Experts
- Tip-Based Content: How to Research, Scale, and Promote
- CHAPTER 15
- Link Acquisition
- Designing the Pitch: Before Sending Your Link Acquisition Emails
- Warmer Relations: Sending “Preciprocation” Signals in Every Email
- Demonstrating Concern for Their Audience’s Needs
- Suggesting “Mentions” or “Sharing” Instead of Requesting Links
- How Much Customization Is Enough for Your Outreach?
- Sending Your Emails
- Handling Outreach Responses: Ignores, Accepts, Declines, and Counters
- Acquisition Tracking: Keeping Tabs on Your Efforts
- Submission Acquisition: Covering Your Bases
- Everything You Need to Know about Subject Lines for Link-Building Emails
- 12 Elements of Irresistible Submission Requests
- CHAPTER 16
- Analyzing BuzzStream Data by Stephen Panico, Chief Growth Officer of BuzzStream
- Key Takeaways
- Methodology
- Overall Reply Rate Trends
- The Impact of Personalization on Reply Rates
- Campaign Results by Outreach Sender Type
- Trends of Top Performers
- CHAPTER 17
- Putting the Pieces Together: Link-Building Campaign Templates
- The Ultimate Resource Aggregation Piece
- The Group Interview/Survey of Experts and Other Market Participants
- Question Design: Warning … You Get What You Ask For
- Your Own High-Quality, Lead-Generating, Brand-Building Content
- Expert Engagement: The “Writing Assignment”
- Free Products and Services: Contests, Donations, and Giveaways
- CHAPTER 18
- Building Links and Expertise with Guest Post Placement Campaigns
- Citation Justification
- Building Links to Sales Pages
- Creating “Citability”
- Recognizing the Practitioner Action Cycle
- Know Your Audience’s Name
- Quick Viability Check—“[Target Audience]” + Intitle: “Write for Us”
- Identify the Volume of Placement/Posting Opportunities
- Gauge the Quality of Placement Opportunities
- Quantify the Level of Expertise in Existing Guest-Published Content
- Gently Cross-Examine the Client Before Signing that Contract
- Tracking the Outreach Phase’s “Moving Parts”
- Outreach: What’s Templatable, What’s Not
- Outreach Execution Advice
- CHAPTER 19
- Creating Broken Link-Building Campaigns
- Search for Links Pages
- Scrape Outbound Links from the Pages
- Check the Status of Each Outbound Link
- Recheck the Status of Each Dead Link for Final Verification
- Gather Metrics for the Dead/Unresponsive Pages
- Review Dead Pages by Hand
- Pull and Qualify Dead Backlinks
- Broken-Link Outreach
- Link Equity Salvage Campaigns
- CHAPTER 20
- Bulk Outreach and Link Building
- From Link Builder to Email Marketer
- Lists of Prospects Are Everywhere
- Create Offers that Work at Scale
- Write Powerful Pitch Templates
- Simplify Your Prospect Qualifiers
- Simplify Your Campaign Success Metrics
- Educate Yourself on CAN-SPAM
- CHAPTER 21
- Local Link Building with Sponsorships
- Sponsorships: A Hyper-Local Marketing Channel
- How Big Brands Measure Sponsorship Success
- Who’s Already Doing Local Sponsorships at Scale?
- Campaign Prep: A Few Last-Minute Secrets
- Sponsorship Prospecting
- Local Sponsorship Outreach
- Selecting Sponsorships
- Sponsorship Fulfillment
- Maximize the Benefits of Local Sponsorship
- Local Sponsorship Measurement
- Know Your Local Branding Limits
- Local Blog Engagement for Local Links and Visibility
- The Guide to Local Link Building Via Existing Relationships
- CHAPTER 22
- The Link Buying Guide by Julie Joyce, owner of Link Fish Media
- Why Buy Links?
- When the Money Changes Hands
- Time Limits and Link Rentals
- Discovery Phase: Finding Good Link Partners
- Due Diligence
- Outreach
- Negotiation
- Follow Up
- Checking the Code
- Monitoring the Links
- CHAPTER 23
- Link-Building Lessons from Our Peers
- Understanding Orphans and Silos
- Infographics, Links, and Linkbait
- Detecting Link Manipulation and Spam with Domain Authority
- Using Paid Search to Support Link-Building Efforts
- Directory Links: Are They Worth It?
- Five Top Link-Building Tips
- Filthy Linking Rich and Getting Richer!
- CHAPTER 24
- Epilogue
- Resources
- Link Building and SEO Glossaries
- About the Authors
- Index
Top SEO books for in-house SEO specialists
Agency and in-house SEO are two very different beasts. While you might have more variety in client work at an agency you will usually not be able to dive as deep into the problems at hand as if you’d worked on the client-side. For this, and other reasons such as stakeholder management, budgeting, and more the work of in-house SEOs is much different, and they face other challenges.
On the downside, it might be a little lonely working as an in-house SEO if you don’t have a big organic search department (most companies don’t). You don’t have many other people understanding your tasks to bounce ideas off and you need to rely on outside information for a bigger portion of your up-to-date industry knowledge.
Most SEO specialists have their favorite side of the job, but everybody agrees that they are much different. All of the above makes way for content specifically geared towards in-house SEOs, and below you can find a few really good books just for your in-house SEO soul.
Mastering In-House SEO – 2020 Edition
The first edition of Mastering In-House SEO is a book compiled by a UK SEO agency Blue Array and their CEO, Simon Schnieders. It was most probably partly meant as an agency lead magnet as it used to be sent for free to UK-based in-house SEO specialists. This doesn’t invalidate the content, though. If you can look past the rough edges of the first edition (like poor editing) it truly is a gem. The book consists of stories from many field-tested in-house SEOs that share their learnings about navigating their own respective corporate structures and getting stuff done at often quite a big scale. Many valuable lessons, useful also for agency people to understand the other side better.
- Foreword
- How I Built a Community for Women to Support One Another
- A Culture of Autonomy: Building an SEO Team That Can Do It All
- How a “Simple” Point of View Made a £30,000/Day Difference
- Beyond Tactics: Principles to Drive Strategic SEO
- How a Best-Practice Guidebook has Helped the Times and the Sunday Times to Succeed With SEO
- How to Win Friends and Influence People: SEO Edition
- Necessary Evil to Notable Edge: Optimising Filter Pages for Ranking and Conversion
- Reducing Risk With Automated SEO Testing
- Data-Led Journalism: How we Created Pages More People Wanted to Read
- The Penguin Prognosticator: Going Against the Crowd
- Think Land Grab: Career Advice for SEOS and Their Employers
- The Overkill Approach to Scoring Your Dream SEO Role
- The Survivalist’s Guide to the Enterprise SEO Jungle
- Proxies, Prerendering and PR: Lessons From a Brief Brand Campaign
- The Fast and Furious: Life as an SEO Expert in a Start-Up
- The Journey: What to Focus on as Your Career Unfolds
- Collaboration and Coordination: An SEO Master List to Get More Done
- History and Legacy: Joining a Company as the First In-House SEO
- Selling SEO: How to Get a Bigger Budget to Grow Organic and Your Career
- Why SEO is More Than SEO
- Imposter Syndrome and SEO: Beating Back Specters of Self-Doubt
- Life in the Newsroom: SEO in the “Breaking News” Landscape
- The Need for Speed: Simple Page Speed Optimisations to Make Your Site Faster
- Scientific SEO: A Test-Driven Approach to Validating SEO
- The SEO Scale: How to Tell if Your Next Company Measures Up
- Cross-Cache: When Pages “Jumped” Countries (And How I Fixed IT)
- Bonus Contribution
Mastering In-House SEO – Second (2021) Edition
The second edition of Mastering In-House SEO that came out in 2021 is following the same concept as the first one but boasts better editing and reads a little better overall. Simon and BlueArray have once again delivered interesting stories from some of the top in-house SEO experts at companies that do great in organic search. For those of you that think of skipping either one of the editions, please don’t. The stories are unique in both of them and all are well worth reading. In tandem, they have some of the highest signal-to-noise ratios of all of the SEO resources out there. The contributing authors are not holding back and hiding behind the dreaded “it depends” phrase.
Mastering In-House SEO – Second (2021) Edition Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Thinking Like a Journalist – And an SEO – To Make Content ‘Queen’
- Here’s What Happens When the SEO Team Runs Your Company’s Website – Perfect
- How Start-Up Thinking Won Big at This $6 Billion Company
- SEO Is Such a Big Part of The Infrastructure of An Organisation – You Have to Think Like an Octopus
- How To Get from Obscurity to The Front Page of Google
- How To SEO At a Not-For-Profit
- Why SEOs Are Indispensable – And How They Can Show It It’s The Micro-Interactions You Have Every Day That Make the Real Difference to Your SEO Credibility
- How We Made Our Website Better for Users – Without Starting from Scratch – And How You Can Too
- Why You Should Make SEO-Dev Relationships a Constant Priority – And Three Ways to Do It Why A Growth Mindset Is the SEO’s Best Tool
- Seeing The True Value of SEO – By Understanding the Businesses You’re Working With
- Using SEO To Help My New Business Survive Lockdown
- How To Avoid Bad Decisions in Your First Procurement Process? Be Prepared – And Be Honest
- Whether Adopting the Latest Software or Acquiring Another Brand’s Website – A Bad Migration Is Something You Might Never Recover From
- Now’s The Time to Think About a Long-Term Career In SEO
- SEO Is a Craft – And In-House SEOs Need to Professionalise It Fast – Or We’ll Make Ourselves Obsolete
- Knowledge Wants to Be Free – But SEOs Need to Make It Findable
- Using Agile to Scale SEO Across a FTSE 100 Business
- Be Prepared, Be Realistic – But Expect the Unexpected – When Doing a Big Infrastructure Project In-House
- Why – And How – To Get the Best Out of Your Developers
- SEO Is the New ‘Product��
- Keep Your Eye on Where the Ball’s Going – But Implement What’s Working Right Now
- How Combining Data, Technology, Content and PR Helped Us Navigate Covid-19
- Strategy In Action – How Autotrader Brought The ‘Smell of Success’ into Our Bid to Boost Sales of New Cars
- Why Education Is Key to Success
- How Knowing Your Terms Can Help You Win Friends and Influence People
- You’re Responsible for A Large Proportion of Sales at Any Large Company – Get the Technical Skills and Embrace It
- How To Make SEO a Genuine Group Effort
Product-Led SEO – 2021
Product-Lead SEO is a book by Eli Schwartz that has a very simple premise, yet is a really refreshing look at SEO. While most SEO resources will focus on technicalities and processes on keyword research, link building, and technical optimization this one will warrant a little shift in your SEO mindset. We’re not going to spoil the fun of reading, but rest assured the clue is in the title. It is definitely worth a read to challenge some of the long-standing staples of SEO but do not expect a quake-like shake-up of the basic principles of SEO.
- Introduction
- The Basics of SEO And How Search Works
- What Is Product-Led SEO?
- SEO Is a Job for Humans
- SEO And Digital Marketing
- Strategic SEO
- Tactical SEO
- Broad SEO Categories
- The Company And SEO
- Implementing Product-Led SEO
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- About The Author
The best Technical SEO books
There aren’t many great tech SEO books. In fact, there isn’t even one that talks specifically about technical SEO. Tech SEO is still quite new to the masses and it’s a combination of many different areas like web development, server administration, data science, and more. That’s why having some experience in those fields will be beneficial for anybody doing technical SEO. You can be sure that we will include here any tech SEO books that will be published in the future, and in fact, it looks like there might be one Technical SEO book in the works – let’s see.
High Performance Websites – 2007
Despite being a little dated this is a book every technical SEO should have read. Understanding basic concepts about the World Wide Web is a must if you want to properly optimize websites for performance.
High Performance Websites Table of Contents
- Praise for High Performance Web Sites
- Foreword
- Preface
- How This Book Is Organized
- Conventions Used in This Book
- Code Examples
- Comments and Questions
- Safari® Books Online
- Acknowledgments
- 1. The Importance of Frontend Performance
- Tracking Web Page Performance
- Where Does the Time Go?
- The Performance Golden Rule
- 2. HTTP Overview
- Compression
- Conditional GET Requests
- Expires
- Keep-Alive
- There’s More
- 3. Rule 1: Make Fewer HTTP Requests
- Image Maps
- CSS Sprites
- Inline Images
- Combined Scripts and Stylesheets
- Conclusion
- 4. Rule 2: Use a Content Delivery Network
- Content Delivery Networks
- The Savings
- 5. Rule 3: Add an Expires Header
- Expires Header
- Max-Age and mod_expires
- Empty Cache vs. Primed Cache
- More Than Just Images
- Revving Filenames
- Examples
- 6. Rule 4: Gzip Components
- How Compression Works
- What to Compress
- The Savings
- Configuration
- Apache 1.3: mod_gzip
- Apache 2.x: mod_deflate
- Proxy Caching
- Edge Cases
- Gzip in Action
- 7. Rule 5: Put Stylesheets at the Top
- Progressive Rendering
- sleep.cgi
- Blank White Screen
- CSS at the Bottom
- CSS at the Top
- Flash of Unstyled Content
- What’s a Frontend Engineer to Do?
- 8. Rule 6: Put Scripts at the Bottom
- Problems with Scripts
- Parallel Downloads
- Scripts Block Downloads
- Worst Case: Scripts at the Top
- Best Case: Scripts at the Bottom
- Putting It in Perspective
- 9. Rule 7: Avoid CSS Expressions
- Updating Expressions
- Working Around the Problem
- One-Time Expressions
- Event Handlers
- Conclusion
- 10. Rule 8: Make JavaScript and CSS External
- Inline vs. External
- In Raw Terms, Inline Is Faster
- Page Views
- Empty Cache vs. Primed Cache
- Component Reuse
- Typical Results in the Field
- Home Pages
- The Best of Both Worlds
- Post-Onload Download
- Dynamic Inlining
- Inline vs. External
- 11. Rule 9: Reduce DNS Lookups
- DNS Caching and TTLs
- Factors Affecting DNS Caching
- TTL Values
- The Browser’s Perspective
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox
- Reducing DNS Lookups
- DNS Caching and TTLs
- 12. Rule 10: Minify JavaScript
- Minification
- Obfuscation
- The Savings
- Examples
- Icing on the Cake
- Inline Scripts
- Gzip and Minification
- Minifying CSS
- 13. Rule 11: Avoid Redirects
- Types of Redirects
- How Redirects Hurt Performance
- Alternatives to Redirects
- Missing Trailing Slash
- Connecting Web Sites
- Tracking Internal Traffic
- Tracking Outbound Traffic
- Prettier URLs
- 14. Rule 12: Remove Duplicate Scripts
- Duplicate Scripts—They Happen
- Duplicate Scripts Hurt Performance
- Avoiding Duplicate Scripts
- 15. Rule 13: Configure ETags
- What’s an ETag?
- Expires Header
- Conditional GET Requests
- Last-Modified Date
- Entity Tags
- The Problem with ETags
- ETags: Use ‘Em or Lose ‘Em
- ETags in the Real World
- What’s an ETag?
- 16. Rule 14: Make Ajax Cacheable
- Web 2.0, DHTML, and Ajax
- Web 2.0
- DHTML
- Ajax
- Asynchronous = Instantaneous?
- Optimizing Ajax Requests
- Caching Ajax in the Real World
- Yahoo! Mail
- Google Spreadsheets
- Web 2.0, DHTML, and Ajax
- 17. Deconstructing 10 Top Sites
- Page Weight, Response Time, YSlow Grade
- How the Tests Were Done
- Amazon
- AOL
- CNN
- eBay
- MSN
- MySpace
- Wikipedia
- Yahoo!
- YouTube
- Index
- About the Author
- Colophon
- Copyright
Even Faster Websites – 2009
A follow-up to High-performance Websites broadens the subject and explains even more concepts dedicated to web performance.
Even Faster Websites Table of Contents
- Credits
- Preface
- How This Book Is Organized
- JavaScript Performance
- Network Performance
- Browser Performance
- Conventions Used in This Book
- Comments and Questions
- Using Code Examples
- Safari® Books Online
- Acknowledgments
- How This Book Is Organized
- 1. Understanding Ajax Performance
- Trade-offs
- Principles of Optimization
- Ajax
- Browser
- Wow!
- JavaScript
- Summary
- 2. Creating Responsive Web Applications
- What Is Fast Enough?
- Measuring Latency
- When Latency Goes Bad
- Threading
- Ensuring Responsiveness
- Web Workers
- Gears
- Timers
- Effects of Memory Use on Response Time
- Virtual Memory
- Troubleshooting Memory Issues
- Summary
- 3. Splitting the Initial Payload
- Kitchen Sink
- Savings from Splitting
- Finding the Split
- Undefined Symbols and Race Conditions
- Case Study: Google Calendar
- 4. Loading Scripts Without Blocking
- Scripts Block
- Making Scripts Play Nice
- XHR Eval
- XHR Injection
- Script in Iframe
- Script DOM Element
- Script Defer
- document.write Script Tag
- Browser Busy Indicators
- Ensuring (or Avoiding) Ordered Execution
- Summarizing the Results
- And the Winner Is
- 5. Coupling Asynchronous Scripts
- Code Example: menu.js
- Race Conditions
- Preserving Order Asynchronously
- Technique 1: Hardcoded Callback
- Technique 2: Window Onload
- Technique 3: Timer
- Technique 4: Script Onload
- Technique 5: Degrading Script Tags
- Multiple External Scripts
- Managed XHR
- DOM Element and Doc Write
- General Solution
- Single Script
- Multiple Scripts
- Asynchronicity in the Real World
- Google Analytics and Dojo
- YUI Loader Utility
- 6. Positioning Inline Scripts
- Inline Scripts Block
- Move Inline Scripts to the Bottom
- Initiate Execution Asynchronously
- Use Script Defer
- Preserving CSS and JavaScript Order
- Danger: Stylesheet Followed by Inline Script
- Inline Scripts Aren’t Blocked by Most Downloads
- Inline Scripts Are Blocked by Stylesheets
- This Does Happen
- Inline Scripts Block
- 7. Writing Efficient JavaScript
- Managing Scope
- Use Local Variables
- Scope Chain Augmentation
- Efficient Data Access
- Flow Control
- Fast Conditionals
- The if statement
- The switch statement
- Another option: Array lookup
- The fastest conditionals
- Fast Loops
- Simple loop performance boosts
- Avoid the for-in loop
- Unrolling loops
- Fast Conditionals
- String Optimization
- String Concatenation
- Trimming Strings
- Avoid Long-Running Scripts
- Yielding Using Timers
- Timer Patterns for Yielding
- Summary
- Managing Scope
- 8. Scaling with Comet
- How Comet Works
- Transport Techniques
- Polling
- Long Polling
- Forever Frame
- XHR Streaming
- Future Transports
- Cross-Domain
- Effects of Implementation on Applications
- Managing Connections
- Measuring Performance
- Protocols
- Summary
- 9. Going Beyond Gzipping
- Why Does This Matter?
- What Causes This?
- Quick Review
- The Culprit
- Examples of Popular Turtle Tappers
- How to Help These Users?
- Design to Minimize Uncompressed Size
- Use event delegation
- Use relative URLs
- Strip whitespace
- Strip attribute quotes
- Avoid inline styling
- Alias JavaScript names
- Real-world savings
- Educate Users
- Direct Detection of Gzip Support
- Performing the test
- Using the result
- Measuring the effectiveness
- Design to Minimize Uncompressed Size
- 10. Optimizing Images
- Two Steps to Simplify Image Optimization
- Image Formats
- Background
- Graphics versus photos
- Pixels and RGB
- Truecolor versus palette image formats
- Transparency and alpha channel (RGBA)
- Interlacing
- Characteristics of the Different Formats
- GIF
- JPEG
- PNG
- More About PNG
- PNG8, PNG24, and PNG32
- Comparing PNG to the other formats
- Comparison to GIF
- Comparison to JPEG
- PNG transparency quirks
- PNG8 and image editing software
- Background
- Automated Lossless Image Optimization
- Crushing PNGs
- Pngcrush
- Other PNG optimization tools
- Stripping JPEG Metadata
- Converting GIF to PNG
- Optimizing GIF Animations
- Smush.it
- Progressive JPEGs for Large Images
- Crushing PNGs
- Alpha Transparency: Avoid AlphaImageLoader
- Effects of Alpha Transparency
- Mountaintop corners
- AlphaImageLoader
- Problems with AlphaImageLoader
- In the wild: A Yahoo! Search case study
- Progressively Enhanced PNG8 Alpha Transparency
- Effects of Alpha Transparency
- Optimizing Sprites
- Über-Sprite Versus Modular Sprite
- Highly Optimized CSS Sprites
- Other Image Optimizations
- Avoid Scaling Images
- Crush Generated Images
- Favicons
- Apple Touch Icon
- Summary
- 11. Sharding Dominant Domains
- Critical Path
- Who’s Sharding?
- Downgrading to HTTP/1.0
- Rolling Out Sharding
- IP Address or Hostname
- How Many Domains
- How to Split Resources
- Newer Browsers
- 12. Flushing the Document Early
- Flush the Head
- Output Buffering
- Chunked Encoding
- Flushing and Gzip
- Other Intermediaries
- Domain Blocking During Flushing
- Browsers: The Last Hurdle
- Flushing Beyond PHP
- The Flush Checklist
- 13. Using Iframes Sparingly
- The Most Expensive DOM Element
- Iframes Block Onload
- Parallel Downloads with Iframes
- Script Before Iframe
- Stylesheet Before Iframe
- Stylesheet After Iframe
- Connections per Hostname
- Connection Sharing in Iframes
- Connection Sharing Across Tabs and Windows
- Summarizing the Cost of Iframes
- 14. Simplifying CSS Selectors
- Types of Selectors
- ID Selectors
- Class Selectors
- Type Selectors
- Adjacent Sibling Selectors
- Child Selectors
- Descendant Selectors
- Universal Selectors
- Attribute Selectors
- Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements
- The Key to Efficient CSS Selectors
- Rightmost First
- Writing Efficient CSS Selectors
- CSS Selector Performance
- Complex Selectors Impact Performance (Sometimes)
- CSS Selectors to Avoid
- Reflow Time
- Measuring CSS Selectors in the Real World
- Types of Selectors
- A. Performance Tools
- Packet Sniffers
- HttpWatch
- Firebug Net Panel
- AOL Pagetest
- VRTA
- IBM Page Detailer
- Web Inspector Resources Panel
- Fiddler
- Charles
- Wireshark
- Web Development Tools
- Firebug
- Web Inspector
- IE Developer Toolbar
- Performance Analyzers
- YSlow
- AOL Pagetest
- VRTA
- neXpert
- Miscellaneous
- Hammerhead
- Smush.it
- Cuzillion
- UA Profiler
- Packet Sniffers
- Index
- About the Author
- Colophon
- Copyright
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