The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, and Jessie Stricchiola is a comprehensive and detailed SEO reference by authors who are clearly experienced. The book tells what works and what doesn't. It's packed with tool recommendations. It covers keyword research, on-site SEO, off-site SEO, technical SEO, local SEO, analytics, and more.
The book explains that search engines use 2 key ranking signals, keyword targeting and links, but that UX is also important.
The last chapter includes this list of major SEO objectives so you know what to focus on. The rest of the book provides detail on how to accomplish these.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Below are my notes from the book.
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Technical SEO only allows your pages to compete for rankings. How highly pages rank depends on quality and depth of content, site's reputation, online visibility (including inbound links).
Not every visitor that comes to an ecommerce site will be ready to buy, so ecommerce sites should publish content for every stage of customer journey, and capture those in stages before buying.
A 2019 study by Hallam Internet suggests that #3 and #4 ad positions may offer highest ROI. High cost of #1 spot can reduce net margin, though it provides branding and market share benefits.
Google Search's guidance about AI-generated content
Open Web Analytics is a self-hosted Google Analytics alternative. It can track via PHP and JS, so it can collect some data from users who use blockers or have JS disabled.
Google Analytics doesn’t reveal keywords people searched for to arrive on your site; these tools can.
vidIQ helps gain YouTube views and subscribers.
TubeBuddy provides keyword explorer and A/B testing of YouTube video titles and thumbnails.
Some SEO platforms (e.g., Ahrefs, Rank Ranger) have YouTube keyword research and rank-tracking capabilities.
If you don't have budget to compete for high-difficulty keywords in web search, try to rank in image or video search.
Changing word order can generate more keywords. When in doubt, choose keyword closest to natural language question.
Check for disambiguations and alternate spellings and phrasings of high-difficulty keywords (hyphenation, verb tenses, singular/plural variations). Use thesaurus.
95% of SERP clicks are on page 1 (top 10 results), and large percentage goes to #1 result. It probably isn't worth investing much to improve ranking until you're around #20 or higher.
See what initial fully rendered version of a page looks like with Google’s Rich Results Test, Mobile-Friendly Test, or Chrome Inspector.
Pagination is problem for SEO because pages are about same topic and can be seen as "thin," content of pages shifts as posts or products are added or removed, and can create spider traps. Keep pagination to minimum and use HTML links to connect paginated pages or create a view-all page and use canonical tags to point paginated pages to it.
Subfolders are better than subdomains for SEO; subdomains don't always inherit SEO metrics from root domain. Subdomains are useful when you want to create separation from root domain, for content or business purposes.
A single good external link to a page positively influences entire domain and every page on it.
Best gTLD is .com or ccTLD for country your site serves.
Choose domain names that make site content obvious (e.g., AutoTrader.com).
If you have hundreds of posts or products and are targeting long-tail traffic, it may be better not to write meta descriptions, as search engines will then pull relevant text from page, and display keywords user searched for.
Bolding or italicizing text adds a little SEO value.
Google recommends Schema.org JSON-LD for structured data.
If you put content licensed from others on your site, put in page header.
If content can be viewed in multiple sort orders (e.g., tag, rating, etc.), you can prevent search engines from indexing multiple pages with same content by requiring cookie for users to access alternative sort order versions, or by using the rel="canonical" link element.
If you force users to register to view some content, keep URL same for logged-in and non-logged-in users, and show 1-2 paragraphs to non-logged-in users and search engines. If you want to display full content to search engines, control content delivery via cookies or sessions (e.g., show 1-2 pages to new visitors without requiring registration). Consider Google’s flexible sampling program to allow Google’s spiders to view content.
nofollow any links that are paid for.
Use rel="ugc" on outbound links in user-generated content.
Use rel="sponsored" on outbound links in ads or sponsored content.
Don't use URL parameters in gTLDs to target different languages countries, because then you can’t use Google Search Console’s geolocation feature when targeting countries, or rely on translation/localization of URL structure depending on selected language or country.
Geolocating by using subdirectories under gTLDs will likely be easiest option if already using a gTLD
Hosting within a country isn’t a definitive signal.
Don't automatically redirect users based on IP location or browser language; this might prevent search engines from crawling all language/country versions. Instead, suggest that user go to version in their language/country.
Specify page’s language/country by using "content-language" meta tag, embedding info in HTTP headers, or using hreflang annotations (usually in HTML head). Use hreflang when you have more than one language/country.
Structured data aids indexing, but not ranking.
Verify structured data with Google’s Rich Results Test.
Core Web Vitals are more important than PageSpeed Insights metrics, but aren't a significant ranking factor.
Even though page speed is a ranking factor for mobile results, Google says this only impacts slowest sites.
Broken external links "do not add value to your site’s ranking," so fix them.
Tools to pull raw backlink data: Ahrefs, LinkResearchTools, Majestic, Moz Link Explorer, Semrush
Moderate guest posting is OK (e.g., monthly guest posts on 2 relevant sites, not 10 guest posts each month on 10 different sites).
Moderate donating to earn links is OK (e.g., donating to a cause aligned with your brand, not donating small amounts to dozens).
Link analysis tools for link-building: Ahrefs, Moz Link Explorer, Majestic, LinkResearchTools, Semrush
In link-building, avoid asking for specific anchor text, reciprocal linking.
In US, anyone who posts product review must disclose that they received compensation (including free product).
Outbound links impact rankings, because you’re endorsing that site’s authority, and relevance of that site to yours.
Google Business Profile > Performance shows calls and website clicks from Google Maps.
GetStat.net will track map pack changes.
Traditional keyword ranking tools can't accurately track Google Maps; need geogrid tool (e.g., BrightLocal, Local Falcon).
Check Google Maps for fake competitors monthly, and report them.
If you use call tracking number, make it primary number in Google Business Profile and make receiving number secondary number, so Google knows relationship between numbers.
If business hides its address in Google Business Profile, rankings will be based around address used to verify listing, and rankings will be strongest in 3-5 mi around that address.
In local search, links from your community carry more weight, even if unrelated to your site.
Citations (mentions of business’s name, address, phone) on third-party sites now have limited influence.
Title attribute may be used for images, but it’s likely unnecessary if you're using alt attribute. If you specify a title, use same words as alt text.
4-6 hashtags is enough for most YouTube videos.
Speechpad can transcribe videos.
Google prefers only 1 video per webpage, and that it be prominent.
You can buy The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization as an ebook or book on Amazon.
If you're optimizing your own website for search engines, this book will give techniques and tools that will help. Although there’s a lot you can do on your own, you’ll get the best results from working with professionals who have years of SEO experience. Contact us to see how we can help with your SEO, to get more traffic from search engines.
