Preface

The book before you is designed to be a complete and thorough education on search engine optimization for digital marketers at all levels. This third edition has been completely revamped and updated from the second edition, taking into account the vast number of changes in the search engine industry, and the digital marketing field as a whole - from the rise of social media to the explosion of mobile. Nonetheless, as with the first and second editions, you can think of it as SEO 101, SEO 102, and SEO 500. Our goal has been to help simplify a very complex, layered topic and to make it easier for people to grasp, as well as to make it easier to focus on the most important aspects of SEO for individual businessesâwhile at the same time providing depth of knowledge and expertise that the most advanced search veteran can utilize. As a group, we have over 40 yearsâ experience working on SEO, a discipline involving deep proficiency in all aspects of digital marketingâfrom website development, information architecture, and user experience (UX) to market research, content strategy, analytics, conversion optimization, and data-driven decision making. These technical skills, along with the ability to merge the analytical with the creative, compose the SEO professionalâs toolkit. We have seen how SEO works over a relatively long period of time, across thousands of different websites. Any one of us could have written this book individually (in fact, one of us tried to), but we discovered that by working together we were able to create something of much greater value for you, the savvy marketer who recognizes the value of the most highly converting digital channel.

Who Should Read This Book

A little-known fact in digital marketing is that many of the most successful growth hackers name SEO as their initial core expertise upon which they developed their growth strategies. Andy Johns (@ibringtraffic), a well-respected growth strategist, started in the SEO field. He was previously the SEO lead for Facebook, Twitter, and Quora, among other roles, and is now the Director of Growth and Revenue at Wealthfront.com. People who are involved in digital marketing at any levelâespecially those tasked with developing online growth strategiesâshould consider this book invaluable. Web developers, development managers, product marketers, brand marketers, and key business personnel should all be exposed to the information in this book if online traction and growth are part of your business objectives. If you are currently focused on SEO as a growth channel for your company or your clients, or you are looking to dive deeply into this broad yet specialized area of digital marketing expertise, you would be well served to read this book from cover to cover. After reading the entire text, you will have been exposed to all aspects of the art of SEO, and will have laid the necessary groundwork for beginning to develop your SEO skills to become a more effective digital marketer and a more educated search marketing professional.

An experienced SEO veteran will find this volume invaluable as an extensive reference to support ongoing SEO engagements: both internally, within an in-house SEO group or SEO consultancy, and externally, with SEO clients. Finally, the book will serve as a refresher course for working SEO practitioners, from the novice to the pass:[professional].

Finally, this book is perfectly suited for the academic environment as a powerful resource for digital marketing, IT, and engineering disciplines. Georgetown University, UCLA, USC, UCSD, UC Davis, University of Wisconsin, the University of Mumbai, the City University of Hong Kong, and many other academic institutions have used The Art of SEO as either required or recommended reading in course syllabi.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic: Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file extensions, and search terms.
Constant width: Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.
Constant width bold: Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italic: Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

TIP

This element signifies a tip or suggestion.

NOTE

This element signifies a general note.

WARNING

This element indicates a warning or caution.

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We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at http://bit.ly/art_of_seo_3e.

You can also head over to The Art of SEO book website for FAQs and to post your own burning questions! Youâll have access to exclusive offers, discounts, and coupon codes on various SEO tools and services. To get exclusive access to instructional videos related to the concepts in the chapter, simply send an email to bonuses@artofseobook.com and weâll send you some awesome links!

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