Search Engine Visibility  By: Shari Thurow  Publisher: New Riders 2003

Review by Andrew Novick

Summary: Describes a series of best practices for achieving top ranking in the web search engines

Go to Google. 
Enter the search term “SQL Server Consultant” .  
My site, www.NovickSoftware.com is the top entry.  That’s what search engine optimization can do for you.

If you’re hoping to end up near the top of the listings for your keywords, there are a series of practices that you can follow to get you there.  Search Engine Visibility by Shari Thurow describes theses practices in an easy to read book.

There’s no magic formula.  This isn’t one of those “Submit your site to 9,000,000 search engines" approaches.  In fact, it’s mostly hard work, consisting of:

• Content Creation
• Placement of keywords in the right places on your site
• Getting other sites to link to you
• Pay for placement
• Pay for listing

The book does a good job of describing how and why each of these factors get you better placement. 

The book starts with descriptions of web directories, search engines, and ways that people will find your site.  It then goes on to let you know how the design of web pages on your site effect your rankings.  This is the most important part of the book.  Next comes the discussion of how to get links and directory entries that improve the amount of traffic that you generate. A very valuable discussion is devoted to the value of paid listings and paid inclusion as ways to accelerate your site’s growth.

I’ve been following most of the practices that you’ll find in the book for the last nine months.  That’s how I’ve achieved top ranking on one keyword and pretty good rankings on others.  Of course, I did most of that what works before the book was published based on advice from a friend, Lance Kenne, who’s done a pretty good job of search engine optimization himself.

The book is concise and can be digested in just a few days. If you’re looking for good advice on how to create a site with high search engine rankings, I recommend this book.