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Preface
Preface
The book before you is designed to be a complete and thorough education on search engine optimization for SEO practitioners at all levels. Think of it as SEO 101, SEO 102, and SEO 103.
We were inspired to create it because we have not previously seen a comprehensive work on the topic of SEO, and we believe that it is very much needed in our industry. 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 businesses.
As a group we have over 30 years experience working on SEO projects. This means that we have seen how SEO works over a relatively long period of time, across thousands of different web sites. 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 have been able to create something of much greater value for you, the SEO artist.
P2.1. Who Should Read This Book
People who are involved in SEO at any level should consider this book invaluable. This includes web developers, development managers, marketing people, and key business personnel. If SEO is not your profession, then this book may serve primarily as a reference. However, if you are or want to become an SEO practitioner, you will likely want to read it from cover to cover.
An experienced SEO veteran will find this volume useful 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 professional.
P2.2. How to Use This Book
After reading the entire text, a new SEO practitioner will have been exposed to all aspects of the art of SEO and will have laid the necessary groundwork for beginning to develop his SEO expertise.
P2.3. Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
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 italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.
P2.4. Using Code Examples
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C. Stricchiola. Copyright 2010 Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie Stricchiola, 978-0-596-51886-8.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at permissions@oreilly.com.
P2.5. Safari® Books Online
NOTE
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P2.6. How to Contact Us
Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher:
- O’Reilly Media, Inc.
- 1005 Gravenstein Highway North
- Sebastopol, CA 95472
- 800-998-9938 (in the United States or Canada)
- 707-829-0515 (international or local)
- 707-829-0104 (fax)
We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional information. You can access this page at:
The authors also have a companion website at:
To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to:
For more information about our books, conferences, Resource Centers, and the O’Reilly Network, see our website at:
P2.7. Acknowledgments
We would like to thank comScore, Hitwise, and Nielsen Online for contributing volumes of data to the book. Others who contributed their time or support to our efforts include:
Hamlet Batista—review
John Biundo—review
Jessica Bowman—in-house
Jim Boykin—tools/training access
Matt Cutts—review
Geraldine DeRuiter—outline development and editing
Jon Henshaw—tools access
Brian Klais—metrics
Jill Kocher—review
Chris Smith—local/mobile search
SEOmoz staff —PRO guides
Jeremy Schoemaker—tools access
Danny Sullivan—for his role in launching this industry
Dana Todd—witty wisdom
Aaron Wall—tools/training access
Richard Zwicky—metrics and tools access
