Is SEO Book marketed to gullible noobs?
As I was skimming Aaron Wall’s Seobook.com blog I realized that the entire purpose of SeoBook.com is to promote an SEO book that is marketed towards gullible noobs who want to rank better in google.
As I explain in one of my previous blog posts Breaking The Ranking Barrier achieving good search engine results placements (SERPS) is highly desirable, but quite difficult in a lot of cases, especially for competitive phrases. Unless you are a novice no SEO book will help you rank better for competitive keywords, I can assure you.
But thousands of well meaning webmasters flock to SEObook.com everyday hoping to uncover invaluable, clandestine ‘nuggets’ of SEO information. Since the articles written in SEOBook.com tend to be sparse, vague, and unfulfilling, a lot of readers turn to the SEO Book itself for more answers. And for only $79 the ’solution’ to higher ranking can be yours! Um hum maybe not.
I have never read SEO Book, and I have no reason to. But you may be asking how I am qualified to pillory a book that I have never read. After all, it would be disingenuous to review a movie you didn’t screen. But plain and simple common sense dictates that SEO Book comes up short.
Ask yourself if SEO Book was so effective why would Aaron Wall sell in in the first place? Why not just keep the ’secrets’ to himself and rank for tons of completive, high revenue keywords while everyone else wallows in their ignorance? But as I have elaborated before, ranking isn’t easy and never will be, even for the ‘gurus’. It is much easier to pitch a book about SEO than actually doing nitty gritty SEO work.
To make matter worse, with thousands of SEO Book customers any information contained in the book as already been disseminated to the masses and is no longer proprietary. It is hard enough for one person to keep a secret; you expect thousands of customers to keep their ‘SEO Book secrets’ to themselves?
In addition, SEO isn’t rocket science nor is it secret. You don’t need to read a huge ebook to learn how to do SEO. SEO is about getting quality inbound links with good anchor text. This information is readily available on almost any webmaster forum since it is so commonplace. Just performing a few google searches will yield an abundance of SEO information for free.
In conclusion run, don’t walk, from SEO book. Use the $79 dollars to buy some quality links instead with will directly help your SEO efforts.
15 Responses to “Is SEO Book marketed to gullible noobs?”
Comment from Administrator
Time January 4, 2008 at 2:07 am
Yea he does have some great SEO tools such as the keyword rankings tools.
But the content is meh
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 4, 2008 at 2:55 am
I think it’s steadily been going downhill. I don’t remember it being this filled with fluff a year ago. He had a recent entry about how his wife saved his life. Nothing to do with SEO. And now his wife is even making postings…kinda like when Yoko Ono got too involved with the Beatles. Hah.
Aaron would probably be really pissed if read this.
Comment from SlightlyShadySEO
Time January 4, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Yeah, it is made for newbies. I’ve heard it’s ok for that.
And I hate to tell it to ya, but if you think SEO is simple, you need a lot more practice.
Comment from Administrator
Time January 5, 2008 at 12:39 am
Googles agos are extremely complicated, but the essence of SEO is simple and strait forward: inbound links from quality sources and on site factors.
But your right though I need more practice. Still much more room for improvement.
Comment from Sucker
Time January 6, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I haven’t read the book either but it does seem like a decent book for beginners who have never heard of h1 tags or anchor text. I’m just glad the sales letter doesn’t claim that you’ll get #1 rankings for any term you want overnight (or maybe it does, I don’t remember.)
Comment from Administrator
Time January 6, 2008 at 10:11 pm
yea the book is marketed for beginners, but there is already a ton of free SEO info on the web for beginners. I think the sales page makes too many bold promises.
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 7, 2008 at 3:07 am
Well, I read it (didn’t buy it), and I was surprised to see many things left out that even a beginner should no. For instance, no a single mention of robots.txt. Plus, he spends too much time talking about PPC. Honestly, I think the book is very disappointing. Not sure if a beginner would realize that though.
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 7, 2008 at 3:08 am
wow, that was filled more typos than I thought.
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 7, 2008 at 3:09 am
Bah, I’m worse than an Indian at DP.
Comment from Administrator
Time January 7, 2008 at 6:42 am
Agree, PPC is NOT SEO. The whole purpose of SEO is to get FREE organic traffic; not pay per click. That is why people do SEO in the first place.
Comment from oss
Time January 8, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Jack Rack,
Actually, Aaron’s SEO book covers robots.txt. Are you sure you read it?
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 9, 2008 at 2:35 am
Does it really? See, I read a 2006 version and I swear it wasn’t in there (I hit ctrl+f). I emailed him asking why it wasn’t in there, and he didn’t respond. So maybe enough people did that, and he added it in.
Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 11, 2008 at 5:22 am
“Agree, PPC is NOT SEO. The whole purpose of SEO is to get FREE organic traffic; not pay per click. That is why people do SEO in the first place.”
Do you think Wall read this discussion? Look at this brief post he made the day after this discussion: http://www.seobook.com/ppc-vs-seo-debate-quitely-dies
Seems sort of coincidental.
Comment from Administrator
Time January 13, 2008 at 9:25 am
Interesting find. Maybe I’ll do a follow-up.
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Comment from Jack Rack
Time January 4, 2008 at 1:47 am
Wall does make a very good Firefox plug-in though. Saves a lot of time.