Wed Jan 23 05:03:10 PST 2019

20

How to Read this e-book

There are many sections in this e-book. Most of them relate to search marketing,
although some of them relate to other aspects of the web.
While I actively market this book as being about search engine optimization, it is
actually more about everything I know about marketing on the web. While there
are many guides to how and where to start on the web, most of them are laced with
affiliate links and bogus recommendations. The goal of this guide is what I had
wished I read when I jumped on the web a few years ago. I also reference the most
useful resources I have found in each field so that if you are interested in learning
more about those subjects, you can see what I recommend.
Some areas might read well, whereas others might be a bit choppy. The reason for
this is that I rewrite sections of it frequently. What started off as a 24-page file is, a
couple of years later, a few hundred pages long. I try to reread it as often as I can
without getting burned out from reading it too much. It is a hard balance to strike
between constantly learning and updating everything I have learned. At the same
time, I have to learn about search in depth so that I can also provide better-than-
average information about that topic.
If you already know a topic covered in a certain section of this book, well then, you
may not learn much (or anything) from that section. I don?t expect to be able to
tell a 20-year professional copywriter how to do her job. The point of the other
sections is that SEO works much better as a marketing mechanism if you use it in
conjunction with other ideas, and do not attempt to do SEO on its own.
SEO as a Standalone Product
Search algorithms are still in their infancy. Many people will still be able to run
successful businesses doing nothing but SEO for at least a few years to come.
When I was new to SEO, and only knew a bit about it, I did not have a strong
brand or understand marketing well. I did things like rank people for terms worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars while charging them a one-time $300 fee. Did
my efforts pay off? Sure, but due to my ignorance of the business end of the
process, I still almost wound up bankrupt because I undercharged for services.
As you learn more about the value of SEO and how it integrates into the web, you
should be able to increase your income or social reach significantly. Only by
pairing SEO with other marketing methods or viewing the web through a larger
lens will you be able to fully appreciate the value of SEO.
If you do not know what PPC, CSS, SSI, CMS, or many of the acronyms mean, it
does not make sense to try to learn all of them in one day. It took me a couple of
years to learn what I have written in this e-book. With that said, in many areas it is
sufficient to understand how or why something works, without knowing all the