The Problem with SEO Books

Well I have read some decent number of SEO books (when I had started I had too much time in hand and I used to think its good to read ebooks) as well as have spent hundreds of dollars (may be more than thousand) in the past 3 years (earlier being naive and then later being curious) to know the secrets of SEO, Link and traffic building and after spending so much money and time, I can safely say that almost 80% of them are useless and do not even deliver what they promise and were only put by the writer to make money. For the rest 20% which deliver what they promise, 19% gives only generic information. So you read it, feel good about it and after that, you forget about it.

So effectively, out of 100 ebooks, you will only get 1 ebook which will be useful, to the point and contains useful practical information.

Now lets come to SEO books, without naming any one in particular, I can safely say I have read all the popular SEO ebooks available in the market or atleast read couple of chapter. And my biggest complaint about them is that -

1. All of them contains way too much information, mostly needless.
2. Contains too much generic information.
3. Talks about things which have nothing do with SEO.

I think any SEO book targeted towards webmasters can be written in less then 20 pages and SEOmoz has done that pretty well (check their beginners guide). No need to explain too many things, just tell them what works and what don’t because this is the key for everything in SEO. And Really, no one has time to read hundreds of pages, either in pdf or as hard copy.

How Should a SEO Book be written -
1. Point to Point
2. Assume that people already know what are Meta tags and such basic stuff. Otherwise just put a link so the person can read more about it. No need to explain what are meta tags for 4 pages with lame examples.
3. Give Examples and Case Studies,tons of real world examples. I often tries to do this here with about.com case study, Mahalo Case Study, Wiki Answers Case Study etc. They are not that very exhaustive but still, I have been told are useful (unless people are lying)
4. Tell people what works and what don’t as well as implications of certain actions.

Sometime back I was seriously thinking about penning down a small SEO book, nothing fancy but something which people find it really useful and for that too for free but now I find it pretty difficult to write as its more time consuming that I had thought. I may put down an Online SEO book on this site though as it is easier to write content slowly online.

If you want to share your experiences with ebooks then please add them as comments. I would surely llike to know what others think

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