The Search Engine Marketing Kit Review
Back in July or so I decided to take the plunge and spend $147 on the 2nd edition of Sitepoint’s Search Engine Marketing Kit 2nd Edition.
After a couple of months wait (the 2nd edition was not scheduled for release until q3 but they did provide a PDF of the 1st edition while we were waiting for the actual 2nd edition) and a couple of delays I finally received the kit.
While going through the kit I started to realize that a lot of the advice was infact common sense but if I had not been told it I may never have actually thought of it. At times the kit did seems a bit scattered (for example while discussing an example the author would quickly change to another then come back again). I did find that a major problem of the book was that a large quantity of information was borrowed heavily from the 1st edition. For example they were talking about certain Google Beta products as if they were some new revelation, on further investigation I found that the particular beta version he was mentioning no longer existed (and had not for a couple of years). Another issue I found with the information being taken so heavily from such an old edition was that many of the references that were given no longer existed. This was especially true when being directed to a service that had a great tool, only to find it either no longer exists or the tool is no longer there (of course not every instance was the authors fault for example some of the references and tools for Microsoft Adcenter were only recently changed).
On the whole the the advice and examples did seem very sound and I especially liked the example for ad campaigns and how he went about the process of choosing keywords etc (this is something I do tend to find quite difficult, thats the problem when you do sites with content you are interested in, sometimes you are too close and can’t see beyond what you yourself would search for).
Another useful part were the interviews near the end with certain SEO experts and advertising experts they seemed to give an honest opinion of the current state of play and did tend to open up a bit on certain subjects you may expect them to try and shy away from.
1 problem that I assume has now been sorted is that the initial kits that were sent out, were sent out with the wrong CD inside (it was marked out correctly). The CD in the kit was for the Web Design Business Kit. Unfortunately they did not inform me of this problem and I had to find out for myself. After some chasing (I contacted their support but got no response, I had to resort to posting on the forum before I got a response) I was informed of the problem and that a CD was being shipped out A.S.A.P.
On the whole the the kit is a great item to have if you are fairly new to the intricacies of the SEO world. They could have done a bit more work checking for errors (such as the old information) before it was released (I think they rushed the release as it had been delayed). But as a whole I think I would give the book 8/10.