SEOBook Review: 5 Reasons NOT to Buy SEOBook
If you have researched across the web for SEO material it is without a doubt that you stumbled across SEOBook. Search Engine Optimization is the practice of actively trying to get your web property to rank on search engines and gain organic ranking. Keyword research, title tags, meta data, anchor text, link bait, etc sounds overwhelming doesn’t it?
If you are like me you realize that the noise to quality ratio is quite awful when it comes to SEO online. However SEOBook claims to offer enough information to separate fact from fiction for experts and teach the basics to small business owners just starting out in SEO.
Below is review of SEOBook and the top 5 Reasons NOT to buy SEOBook
5. Information in SEOBook is available for FREE - The truth of the matter is information contained in the book is scattered online. With a few months of research you can probably find all the information yourself and write your own book. Sure you may have to dig through massive amounts of facts to find the nuggets that will actually make your campaign a success, but still all the information is hidden throughout the blogosophere, all you need are a few hundred hours and your all set.
4. Pay someone else to do SEO for you Why would you want to learn SEO for one fixed cost, and use it continuously, when you can pay someone? Simply search for SEO in San Francisco and take your pick. Keep paying them upwards of $100 dollars an hour to do work that you can do yourself, if you took the time to learn the basics. Learning is difficult so I recommend staying away from SEOBook and teaching yourself and finding a professional who over charges you instead. Better yet you can simply buy AdWords or similar programs and have ads appear next to organic searches, if you have the budget you can appear for the most competitive terms, at upwards $5.00 a click its a bargain.
3. SEOBook is TOO long - What if I you are beginner the book is going to be overwhelming, over 300 pages of content? And what if you know SEO, but want to sharpen your skills, how will you ever skip over the basics? Sure there are chapters and table of contents, and even a search function, but what a pain it is to use those.
2. SEOBook costs TOO much - Any e-book over 19.99 is way to expensive to me. Why should a book that doesn’t have any physical parts to it cost so much? I mean what is the cost of making a PDF? Like I mentioned before why would you want to pay so much for a book when you can just spend $100s of hours finding the information yourself, or pay someone $100s of dollars to do it for you, or pay Adwords $100s of dollars to appear for relevant searches?
1. Google Sucks and nobody uses it - Obviously I am biased here, but who still uses google. Most consumers know about SEO, so they no longer trust organic search results. Why invest in the time to generate 100s of qualified leads through organic search?
I know it is hard to convey sarcasm through the written word, but if by now you did not get the sense that I am full of crap then re-read the points again. I think SEOBook is a great investment, or else I would not have a GIANT banner on the side promoting it.
UPDATE: SEOBook is now offering a whole new way to learn SEO with custom modules, Member Only Videos and more. Don’t miss out on this opportunity I am certain Aaron will jack up the price soon.
8 comments
Are you kidding me about nobody using Google? Everyone uses google, ok not everyone but a large amount of people use it and a large amount of people don’t know about seo - they’re clueless about seo.
[…] If you were given the task of creating an SEO “cheat sheet”, would you do it? Is SEO simple enough to condense into a resume-sized document or are there so many intricacies to the practice that it wouldn’t even be possible to condense a book on the subject to less than 300 pages? […]
@ Bellic
Are you kidding me, did you not notice the sarcasm throughout the whole post?
A lot of people do use Google, and I would say TOO MANY PEOPLE use it
Google gives NOTHING back to adwords qualified professionals. You take much time to learn their system, but all the money goes to Google in the end if you are working with small businesses. So I might charge $100 an hour, but for a lousy 4 hours of optimization in the course of the year. (seriously - do you think I give a *sh*** about some lousy 30 dollar referral fee? pa-leese spare me - that goes for you 2 Yahoo/ MSN/ ASK).
Meanwhile, client is paying through the nose, generally, but since click charges are so high already, they don’t want to dish out more money for monthly management. Who can blame them? I wouldn’t want to either. But it’s not really good to run an ad campaign without stalking it will a real stats program - not Google’s free Urchin which obscures the most important info - such as the failure of Google’s broad match for many advertisers. Why a failure? Their thesaurus throws a lot of crap searches that clearly are not a match! but you won’t know this from either your account, or from Urchin - very clever Google!
Google is going to destroy the agency model - for everyone - even themselves when all their advertisers get disgusted. For the past two or more years, I refuse to ‘push’ Adwords - no way - it’s a rip off. And for me personally - I barely covered my time spent on the exam with the pathetic small bits of money got here and there. So I let my credential lapse.
I will start selling this service again once Google provides the 20% margins to the agencies managing these accounts - which is the best case for the advertisers. This is how the traditional media model worked - and there is a reason it worked for a long time.
@Doleres Hark
Thank you for that insightful comment. I could not agree with you more. AdWords has become far to advanced for the average business owner to manage. They have to find someone to run the campaign for them, but as more agencies involve more complex tools the margins are getting smaller for everyone. The agency suffers, the advertisers suffer, and Google profits. This is why I keep pushing for people to take the time to learn SEO, it is much more effective and the ROI is significantly higher.
Thanks for your post
[…] and Updates February 21, 2008 It is not a mystery that most of the SEO I learned was from SEOBook Review. Well Aaron Wall seems to have followed Brian Clarks idea of educating rather than selling ebooks. […]
You commenter’s are suckers. This post is an extreme example of linkbait. Nothing credible here is said against Seobook. Maybe Seobook controls the review probably. Take this as a lesson in SEO excellence.
@Sky Monkey.
Thanks for calling me out, obviously I think SEO Book is great, or else I would not be promoting it through the banner. I just got sick or reading positive reviews and thought a sarcastic review may be in order.
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