#61/111: Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day

What is it about?

You heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but don’t really know what is about? No problem, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin will help you to start your SEO campaign and execute it successfully.

What can I learn?

Choose and use your keywords: If you want to be found when someone is searching for water bottles, you have to write about water bottles. This is a fundamental step. A good tip for selecting keywords is using composed keywords, e.g. plastic water bottles or sports water bottles. Over the time search queries increased in length. The average query is now about four words long.

Create Buzz: A major attribute of good search ranking are backlinks. Create content people want to link to. Create Buzz. Write things that people want to share. How-to lists, Top X lists, videos and pictures/infographics.

Measure your success: You can’t control what you don’t measure. Start using a simple analytics software like Google Analytics. This allows you to see how many people visited your site, which sites and where did they come from. However, don’t be discouraged if your traffic isn’t roaring immediately. Everything takes time.

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day is a very basic text which is appropriate if you never read about or done some SEO. The authors present the key principles neatly structured and allow you to follow a plan to increase your search engine ranking. In conclusion, if you’ve never done anything with SEO or don’t have much time, this is a book for you.

#56/111: Permission Marketing

What is it about?

How do you advertise? Seth Godin differentiates between interruption marketing (e.g. banner ads, TV ads, magazine ads) and permission marketing (sending information directly to people who accepted to send your information).

What can I learn?

Leverage interruption marketing: Permission marketing is often a bit mis-defined. It’s not about stopping your advertising, it’s about using it better. You have basically two options in advertising: a) You try to make a sale directly or b) You try to get the permission to give them more information. Seth recommends b) because it’s a less expensive step for your prospect (giving away their email vs. giving away twenty bucks) and you have a less expensive channel for frequent information (sending emails vs. buying magazine/tv ads).

Build trust: After the first step is done, it’s time to nurture your prospects. If you aren’t a big brand, you probably want to build trust first. Send them some relevant information: Articles, Top X Lists, How-to instructions, etc. After some time, you can sprinkle advertising in your emails. However, if you actually sold to them, don’t stop providing relevant information. This will increase your customer lifetime value.

Conclusion

At first, I was a bit unsure about actually reading this book, because I read Purple Cow by Seth Godin and wasn’t really impressed. Though, this book is impressive. Seth Godin wrote it in 1997 and it was incredible visionary. Today, it is unsurprisingly a bit outdated though the basics are still useful.

#49/111: How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit

What is it about?

Writing a novel and becoming a full-time author is a dream of lots of people. But it is really hard. How about writing a how-to book? Robert W. Bly shows how to write how-to texts and how to market and sell them.

What can I learn?

Research your topic: Before writing your article, blog post or booklet, you should research your topic. You can conduct interviews or read books about this topic. Though, the best thing is to actually do it by yourself. If you want to write an article about fishing, go fishing. If you want to write an article about online marketing, do some online marketing.

Clarity, Concise, Compelling: These are the main guidelines for writing good how-to content. That is, you should write as few words as possible and use a clear structure (headlines, sub headlines, etc.). Furthermore, your content should be easy to read, i.e. no unusual words or too much jargon. Lastly, use examples to give your articles more life.

Break your content down to steps: The last thing to remember is breaking your instruction down to several steps. It’s easier to follow for your readers and supports the structure. In addition, people like lists. Think of Top 3 ways of X, Top 10 Y on twitter or How to eat healthier in three steps.

Conclusion

Originally I read the book because I wanted to know how to improve my writing style. Sadly, only 12 of about 220 pages explain how to write better. The rest is about various formats (books, booklets, articles, etc.) for your content and its marketing. Though, if you want to make money with writing how-to texts this is a great book for you.