I am torn on this book because I liked the first few chapters and found them simple to read and incorporate the ideas. I liked the theory of the "right brain + left brain" approach. I'm not new to SEO so I was able to move quickly through the work. The templates were helpful -- at first. But soon I found them cumbersome and not always worth the time I spent to put them together - especially when it came to key word selection. The industry is changing so fast the URLs were not always accurate anymore. The Wordtracker product they highly recommend i thought was a waste of my time - but it could just be the industry i'm in. So try this book if you are new to SEO - it won't hurt and may help.

This books gets right to the heart of what all website owners want to know. How do I attract viewers to my sight. There are many practices that should be followed that the author suggests. Not a fluff book. Practical advice is given.

I am a web developer who lately read a lot of SEO books and SEO online forums to bring my company website to the next lever, I came across this book, bought it, read it, and feel very disappointed with it.

If you are designer, developer, programmer, or somehow HTML literate, and wanting to do more for your website, save your bucks on this book. This book is not designed for programmers. If you a business man whom just want to learn what SEO is, save your bucks too! You better of getting the knowledge from the dummies series. Although the book covers every aspect of SEO, but the book only describe very briefly on each aspect.

Over 75% of the content in this book is general concepts of SEO, which you can basically learn from any other SEO books. The remaining 25% is the "SEO Plan", which I found not practical.

Good book if you want to learn about Search Engine Optimization and have little or no experience in this space. Well written and easy to follow.

Clear and concise. Basic information, however, which makes this book a good place to start for beginners breaking into the SEO arena.

I must appreciate the effort taken by the Cousins but its sounds too basics.
It could have had a faster pace and covered more SEO parameters.

The writers have spent hours and months writting this book and it is hard not to admire their determination, but the result is unbalanced. The book does bring some hard facts and useful behaviours but enough to make a brochure not a full book. The first half of the book talks generalities and concepts about the web, about marketing and search engine behaviour but every time it is becoming really interesting the writers say "we'll see that point in chapter XX". It is a good trick to keep readers of thrillers on the edge, but I found it annoying and time wasting. Eventually the book gets into stats and practical actions but it feels too little too late. Most of the "do to" lists at the end of each chapter are more summaries than action points. If you are starting from scratch and have time, this book will teach you usefull things and fill your time.

I've dabbled in SEO over the years mainly as an account rep (punching bag) for ad agencies. Caught in the middle of the client and the creative/techs that play each other off one another. This book really opened my eyes about how to build a SEO team with the PR, Marketing and IT dudes. And, I finally get it. You HAVE to document your SEO work for the accounting folks. There is SO MUCH junk out there and vendors promising you better SEO for $$$. In one way, I can't believe these wonderful ladies are actually sharing this "school of hard knocks" info. And, the injection of bits of humor make it such a wonderful read. They prove their thesis that SEO is really an on-going process. And, they provide the step-by-step (truely an hour a day) with downloadable FORMS to document and faciliate the journey. I've checked out a lot of SEO related stuff over the years either in books or on the web, and, nothing compares to this 300 page book. For me, and, I'm really not a techi dude (I'm in sales "a people person") --- I just want a smok'n site to get more leads --- but, this book was actually fun to read. And, understand! There wasn't a page I read that I said "huh?" Don't get me wrong, Jennifer & Gradiva know there stuff. I'm sure they could talk over my head in a heart beat. But- you know- that's the REAL sign of a professional (like a doctor with "good bedside manners" that can explain and organize things so that they can be understood. I'm looking forward to future books. - not that this book was incomplete. I read a ton of books, and, these authors have a talent. Thank you for sharing your it with us ladies!

The perfect book for starters -and a good one to look for info-
Easy to read and to understand.

This book helped us earn a 6159% ROI on a search directory investment. We paid $120 and sold $7391 in services. And I'm sure it won't stop there. Enough said?

The book is well organized and gives great info to help you decipher which activies are best for you. I also loved the left brain/right brain sections. I'm left brain but like to hear both perspectives.

Be warned... some sections take less than an hour, some sections take a week depending on how many resources you have and where you started.

I haven't finished the book so I can't report on page ranking results yet. I'm half way through and taking my time through the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) section - a whole book could be written on this alone. But based on the search directory we found as a result of the books work, I felt that I could provide credible feedback.

However, this book gives me a new respect for Search Engine Optimization work. Anybody can do this (in fact YOU should do this as opposed to totally outsourcing); it just takes a little elbow grease.

I hoped this book would tell me new things about search marketing. Unfortunately it did ot offer any new information for me. In my opinion the book has a too high housewife content. If you are a newbee and like to take it slowm this book is good for you. If you are somewhat experienced, look further.

As a novice to SEO, this book is excellent at walking you through all of the items and tools that one needs to implement a solid SEO plan.

I'am very pleased with this book. Definately one of the best books on the subject of SEO.

As an SEO Consultant for a large design company, I often speak to people who have no idea what SEO is, let alone understand it's sometime tricky nuances. It was very nice to see a "beginner" oriented book that not only made things easy to understand, but touched on some of those tricky parts.

I've read a number of beginning SEO books, and this was by far the best one yet. You will be hard pressed to find information in this writing that will not be pertinent and right on point with search engine guidelines and proper SEO methods. This was very pleasing, and it's about time a beginner book was written to get others started correctly.

I searched for "seo tips" and neither of their two websites showed up in the top 20. Uh oh... if they can't make what they preach work for themselves, how can they help *you*, who might have paid for this book?

I must admit that there may be some really helpful items hidden in this book, but it is just so fluffy and disorganized that it is impossible to read. I have a more linear and logical approach to this sort of thing, so maybe it will appeal to other readers. But for me, there was little helpful information and a woefully small amount of pith buried in an avalanche of words. It seems like it is trying to form a new scheme every 10 pages.

Really not a publication-level job of writing.

This book is definitely a good investment for small business owners and marketing personnel who don't have the option of delegating SEO work to third parties. I believe the authors do a great job of demistifying the work of SEO for those of us who are not inclined, but are forced nonetheless, to deal with all the arcane intricacies of SEO work.

If you are a beginner, buy it because you will learn a lot. I believe the authors strike the right tone and present a valuable message to those seeking the Holy Grail of search marketing, tons of targeted traffic to their site.

My only gripe is the somewhat tedious format and conventions that the authors impose on the reader. You have to wade through a lot of fluff to get to the golden nuggets of wisdom. I would have preferred a more direct, straight-to-the-point approach.

However, the support materials at the authors' web site are excellent for organizing and systemizing your SEO efforts. I contacted the authors with a question through their site and was amazed with the responsiveness and knowledge.

I highly recommend this book.

I simply loved the book, and believe me; I read everything I can get my hands on about Search Engine Optimization. The book was actually very technical without getting into the details of how to write java script. Also, in areas where the authors felt there was more study to be had, they gave excellent referrals to other books which I also bought. People are built different, so the "left brain, right brain" stuff was perfect for me. Great job, I'm waiting for the next one.

I'm a web designer that has been performing SEO services for my clients for the last year or so. This book really helped me get my processes and reporting organized in a way that makes more sense to me and to my clients.

I brought this book because of its high rating. It disappointed me. It took me two days to read this book without learning anything. My previous SEO experience is 1 day's of reading on the internet.

I would give this book higher score if it is only 20 pages. It is just too wordy -- a waste of time and money.

If you are a developer trying to get into the mind of those marketing guys, this book might be of some help. If you want to know more about search engines, optimization and what search engines like to see, look further. This book will give you a list of tips to follow, which all make perfect sense, but just aren't worth the money.

I expected more technical stuff, as I am a technical person. What I found were some usability guidelines which are to me just following common sense, but I guess unknown to some. They are always good to follow, and if Web isn't your job you might find some usable stuff inside. Not just for SEM, but for your customer experience too.

The book contains too much empty talk, and is waaay overrated. I won't give it one star, because it can be useful to someone who has interest in making his homebrew site better, but for a professional it's a waste of money.

Essential hints,tips and techniques for one person shop to Fortune 500 companies-DiscountsWarehouse

In general, I found the information very useful and informative with a great action plan to get started and make things happen. Everything that Grappone and Couzin wrote had legitimacy and significance. However, they started to get redundant after a while and the book could have been written in about half the number of pages. Nevertheless, it's a good read for anybody in charge of their SEO efforts.

With just a little bit of knowledge for a beginner in SEO, I can see so many other areas of SEO are opening up for me to explore, that I was not aware of. What I really like about the book is that it is written like they are trying to help you learn.
Mike

I've worked on SEO for numerous web sites with our company [...] over the course of the past few years. Since I started doing this, I haven't found a book that was so well written and easy to follow for those becoming acquainted with this progressively sophisticated topic, while retaining value as a reference you can go back to as a consultant or an end user wanting to tackle specific aspects of Search Engine Optimization.

"Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day" reminded me of the excellent book "Search Engine Visibility" written by Shari Thurow back in 2002, with the benefit that this one was edited in 2006, so it is more current than the classic SEO reference by Thurow in that respect. As someone who has worked on SEO and reviewed almost all the books on the topic, I highly recommend this book.

I've been an Amazon.com customer for years and this is my first review. This is a great SEO book and is worth every cent. It is easy to follow, not too techy and has a lot of valuable information for the do it yourself SEOer.

I've been in the SEO biz for 6 months now and this book gave me some great ideas as to how to continue to improve my client's sites. This is a wonderful book whether you are just starting out or are already experienced in the field.

I own and operate a small tourism based business. I found this book to offer a great, but simple to-do-list of what needs to be acomplished in order to succesfully market my site on the web. Thanks!

Imagine if your best friend and your favorite teacher wrote a guide on SEO. The result would be this book. Funny, easy to understand, and right to the point, SEO: An Hour a Day doesn't waste time getting to the nitty gritty. Within a few pages I discovered some easy fixes which could create big, positive changes to traffic flow for my web site. I'm a Web Marketing and Communications Associate at a non-profit, and this book is my new bible. Even though my organization was kind enough to bestow that title on me, I'm sorely lacking in the lingo of the web. The authors take care of that problem! They guide the reader along without being condescending, just like a helpful teacher should. Plus the book is well-designed, easy on the eye, and itself easy to navigate. To the authors I say: "Thank you for hearing my cry for help!"

This book is very clear and easy to understand. It's perfect if you want to learn everything about SEO, no matter if you are a professional or a newcomer to the Internet.

Excellent! This is just the book if you need to make the most of your web site, improve its search rankings, increase its traffic, and generally made the most of what you want it to do. This applies to a single person business, small, medium, large or multinational firm. Whatever your circumstances, commercial, private or charitable, you will make more of your web site if you follow this guide.

Excellently written, in clear English, Search Engine Optimisation - An Hour A Day, will quickly and easily lead you to a greater understanding of how to carry out an SEO Plan. You are given the correct information in order to be able to do this and you are not given anything superfluous, saving you time and allowing you to concentrate on the actions that will get you to where you want to be. You can even choose to concentrate on only those matters which are absolutely essential thereby saving you even more time.

The two authors are greatly experienced in helping real people in every size and type of organisation to maximise their Search Engine rankings and make the most of their web site generally, and this shows in the book. You will find that they speak to you clearly and that you will gather information quickly and easily. They only use technical jargon when necessary and it is thoroughly explained accordingly. This book will suit you whether you are a techie or not.

The book will give you the knowledge that you need and will then supply you with a plan so that you can carry out SEO in an orderly fashion. Much more than this, the book cleverly helps you to identify the results that you want from your web site. The experience that the authors have working with all sizes and shapes of organisations is used to good effect and you will find that there is added value in helping you to get different departments to work together.

You will even find that you can access all the documents you need to carry out your campaign by simply visiting their web site and downloading all the templates that you need, such as To Do Lists, Keyword Spreadsheets and more. It is up to you how much time you spend every day on your project so you can spend less than one hour day if you choose.

You will find that you will have enough knowledge to be able to promote your web site in the way that you want by the time that you have finished reading this book. An easy read, logical, no boring history of the Internet, and a plan that just about anybody could carry out quite easily. Full marks all round!

First let me say, I usually don't write reviews on Amazon. But feel that my experiece of this book must be shared with others who are interested in reading it.

I've been trying read this book for the pass 3 days, and have read most of it during that course. Jennifer includes some good info on how to write meta tags and titles, and how to use directories. However, this book is so full of fluff that I donbt half of the people who bought it read half-way through it. First, it makes this goofy asumption that you will spend 3 months reading every single word of the book. It's full of all these high schoolish "work sheets" (no, wait, you need to download them from her site so that you can follow along). Also, one thing about this book that is extremely fusterating, is that she keeps making referances to other parts of the book while you are trying to learn about the most important content. I had to keep looking things up online so that I could see what she was refering in the points she was trying to make.

For Example, if you want to learn how to check inbound links to your site, Jenifer tells you to go read the previous chapter again. So, I did this, not having read the chapter orginally because it didn't cover the material I was interest in. After reading the capter, the method she suggests doesn't even work. I spent 2 hours of my day off on this nonsense, just for checking inbound links, which could have been presented in one paragraph.

Jenifer does have some writing talent that you may find entertaining and educational. She may have been a better high school instructor than an author though, considering all the clownish homework she expects you to do in jump through her hoops. What I would have liked to have seen is this info presented in well organized sections that cover one topic at a time until completion, and then move on to the next topic. This would have been a good book if she didn't expect you to go though all the clownish back-and-forth refering and homework assignments, but instead just presented the information clearly.

I also bought SEO for Dummies. Surpisingly it was a much better book. I think Jennifer needs to re-write her current edition and make some serious revisions.

I really liked this SEO book. It is easy to read, entertaining (which isn't easy to do for SEO) and is laid out in a easy to follow, logical order. If you are a beginner or a professional this book will help you in your opimization efforts.

I have never purchased any book on SEO before as I assumed the content would be too dated.
Jennifer and Gradiva take a holistic approach to SEO which is most practical and realistic. Combined with the companion web site and materials contained there, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get real results from their SEO Marketing efforts.

It used to be that working with the search engines was so simple. You put up information about your site in META tags. You went to Google, Yahoo and a few others and entered your domain name as a place for them to come visit. They would visit, and you would be listed.

Since then things have changed. It doesn't seem that the search engines are paying much attention to the META tags any more. But they are looking at things like the directory name where the home page is located, and the file name of the home page.

This book lays out a plan of spending one hour a day in attracting visitors to your page through the search engines. If that's too much time, perhaps you can do it in spurts. Spend some time not reading the book and putting the most important parts into practice. Then to the remainder as you have time.

If you don't want people to visit your site (you're running an internal training site for instance) don't bother. But if you are like the rest of us, here are a lot of good hints and tips.

There are a lot of SEO consultants out there. The price of this book will equal about 10 or 15 minutes of their time. But afterwards, you will understand your site better and you can do as good a job as they can.