Search Engine Optimization Books are an immense help when undertaking a search engine optimization project. So are online reference materials. This page hosts a collection of search engine optimization books that we have found useful, as well as links to some of the better resources we have found online.
First, a listing of the search engine optimization and internet marketing books we have found to be useful:
Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, 2nd Edition; Peter Kent, Wiley Publishing Inc., 2006, Indianapolis, Indiana. If you really are starting out from nothing, this is a good place to start.
HTML4 For Dummies Quick Reference, 2nd Edition; Deborah S. Ray Eric J. Ray; Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2000, Hoboken, NJ. It's always good to know a bit of HTML.
Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site; Mike Moran and Bill Hunt, IBM Press, 2006, Upper Saddle River, NJ. For someone who's not a beginner. This is a good reference guide. A lot more detail (as expected) than the dummies book. Better for intermediate or expert SEOs.
101 Ways to Promote Your Web Site; 4th Edition; Susan Sweeney, C.A.; Maximum Press, 2003.
SEO BookAaron Wall. The great thing about this book is that it is updated by the author. The SEO Book website itself contains a lot of useful information. It has grown large and is not well maintained though. I find there are outdated materials and broken links. The author is well known for his search engine optimization expertise. If you need to buy just one book, this is probably the best one to start with for the reason that he shares a lot of lessons learned along the way.
The following online reference materials all proved very helpful at one time or another:
Basic HTML For those of us who need a little help interpreting the source code behind our website.
http://www.chiff.com/business/SEO.htm This is an excellent place to start if you are a novice. It provides a basic definition of SEO and a wealth of links to other helpful resources and tools. Upbeat and positive!
Vaughns-1-Pagers Factors Google Uses to Rank Websites. This is the best way to gain an in-depth understanding of what google uses to rank websites. You might be surprised!
Whatis.com IT Knowledge exchange: This is a virtual reference library of everything you ever wanted to know about technology. Extremely easy to use and comprehensive.
Webworkshop.com Where experts share and others come to learn. A great resource for SEO - forum, blog, Q&A.