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The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks
Author: Rachel Andrew
Paperback: 400 pages
Cost: $26.37
Published: August, 2007
I’ve never claimed to be a programmer but working in SEO means that I’m involved in creating or editing hundreds of pages over the course of a year. Understanding how CSS works, and being able to implement basic to more advanced CSS strategies, has become essential over the past few years. Until now I’ve only had a rudimentary knowledge of CSS. The CSS Anthology has helped me grow my knowledge significantly on the topic.
Thursday’s Celebrity Apprentice was a pretty lackluster episode. I was excited to see Marilu Henner and Vincent Pastore square off. I like both of them, but Marilu seems to be a much stronger leader than Vincent. I wasn’t sure who I was rooting for. I mean, I love it when Omarosa’s team loses, but I don’t want to see Marilu go.
The women have severe cohesiveness issues, thanks largely due to Omorosa. On the other hand, the guys, who work very well together, had some pre-task fireworks themselves. Which brings me to…
The Successful Investor: What 80 Million People Need to Know to Invest Profitably and Avoid Big Losses
Authors: William J. O’Neil
Paperback: 183pages
Cost: $8.76
Published: September, 2003
After dabbling with the stock market for a couple of years and finding both moderate success and spectacular failure, O’Neil’s book “The Successful Investor” pretty much confirmed what I already knew. I was doing this all wrong. That’s the depressing part. But the good part is that O’Neil teaches you how to do stock investing right.
SEO
Link Building
Social Media
The Eyes Have It: How to Market in an Age of Divergent Consumers, Media Chaos and Advertising Anarchy
Authors: Kevin Lee with Steve Baldwin
Hardcover: 189 pages
Cost: $16.47
Published: October, 2007
I didn’t know what to expect going into The Eye’s Have It. I know Kevin Lee’s reputation in the SEM industry, which is good, as well as his thoughts on the SEO industry (which can be way off base) so I’m sure those things colored my perception before I even began to read. But I have to say that whatever you know or think of Lee, this book is well worth reading.
I think that by now everyone pretty much agrees that words are an important part of your website and your online marketing campaign. While a picture may be worth a thousand words, sometimes just a few words can provide the right mental picture your audience needs in order to make that final buying decision.
For many business owners, writing can be a daunting task. Sure we know our products and services inside and out and putting what we know into words is easy enough, but that’s about as far as it gets.
Is that enough to sell? Sure.
Could more be done to sell better? You bet!
There is a new book out by Seth Godin that gets to the why of New Marketing and explains the 14 trends that go with it. He encourages you to wisely dive in and embrace it. What are you waiting for?
Seth Godin who has written 11 books to date including Purple Cow as well as being an entrepreneur and highly respected speaker has another great book for us to read, Meatball Sundae. I truly enjoyed yet again his getting to the point writing merged with real-life business examples. Godin doesn’t focus on the negative instead he illustrates through words what a company did and what they could have done better and on the flip side what they did and what he thought was amazing about it. He also includes many websites that should be looked over as examples or used in your new marketing strategy. Godin gets into old marketing and new marketing how they differ and why old marketing is not the future or the present. He touches on, The Long Tail theory coined by Chris Anderson which is also one of SEOmoz’s must read books. Godin explains why direct communication with your customers is more important then ever and how one person can effect your business by using direct communication. It’s up to you to make it a positive comment or a negative one.
Wiep Knol put together a fantastic document on internal and external linking values. Developed in the same format as Rand’s Search Engine Ranking Factors, Wiep’s Link Values Factors puts together some of the greatest minds in link building, presents them with a series of factors and asks them to rate each according to how much weight it carries.
As is usually the case, not everyone agrees, which is what makes this document fun. It’s very eye opening in that some of the top minds disagree so completely on what is or isn’t a valuable link. It only goes to show that there is still much to be proven in the science of link building. But you have to admire anybody who can definitely answer any of these questions at all. A lot of time and testing has to go into knowing many of these answers, and you know that even if in disagreement, these guys are well educated in the realm of links.
Last year I made it a New Years Resolution goal to read a book a week. I’ve actually had that goal for the past several years now but it wasn’t until this year that I started documenting all my reading so I’d actually know if I hit my mark. I did.
So if you ever want to know what a person like me reads, here you go. This list incorporates all my business and personal reading. The links will either go to my reviews of the books which I have already posted here on the blog or directly to the Amazon product page.
(Don't wait for the movie!)
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
