Nikki Pilkington's "299 Steps To Website Heaven" is an excellent introduction to the mysterious world of search engine optimisation and Internet marketing which is well written, interesting, practical and easy to read.
Update - Ebook now available for free from my Online Profits blog - thanks Nikki.
Nikki has managed to find 299 different tips to improve the effectiveness of your website with the focus mainly on moving you up the search engine rankings.
Nikki's SEO Tips Work
I have been following Nikki's tips for some time on Ecademy.com so when she announced that she was writing a book (available both in ebook and proper book form) it was a no brainer that I was going to buy it.
The reason is simple.
Although my attention is currently focused on my blogs you can see the impact following Nikki's tips has had in Google.co.uk for my key-phrase "business coaching"
business coaching - in case things change or Google throws a wobbly, at the time of writing my plancs.co.uk website is number 1.
When I wrote a testimonial for Nikki on Ecademy back at the end of November, my website was consistently on the first page. Five months later I can tell you that it has been consistently ranked number one for the last three or four months.
299 Steps To Website Heaven
The book is split into the following sections:
- Key-phrases
- Titles and tags
- Contents
- Help Google Out
- Links and linking
- Website promotion
- Blogging
- Pay per click
- Social networking
- Tracking and measuring
- Miscellaneous
- Freebies
- Cool Tools
As you can see, 299 Steps To Website Heaven includes a little bit of everything. Some of the very technical bits went a bit over my head but the main points are very clearly explained with examples to make sure that you understand exactly what Nikki means.
Suggested Improvements for version 2, 299 Steps To Website Heaven
I would have liked to have seen a more extensive introduction in the 299 Steps To Website Heaven with the main tips flagged up as priorities.
299 steps sounds like a long journey and many people may be wary of starting something they don't think they can finish. It would have been nice to have seen "the 20 steps you absolutely must take" as a way to prioritise actions and make sure that time is most effectively focused on those few items that really matter.
I would have also liked a contents page at the start with the main chapters listed with page references and an index at the end.
Nikki uses clever, teasing titles for the tips but some of them may be oblique when I come back to "299 Steps To Website Heaven" in a few months when I want to look up something I "kind of remember."
Recommendation - Buy "299 Steps To Website Heaven"
I rate the 299 Steps To Website Heaven book with 4.5 stars which is a strong buy recommendation.
It is easy to read and understand and you will want to put many of the ideas into action. It is suitable for beginner through to informed intermediate.
I am not an search engine optimisation expert but I do read and listen to a lot of Internet marketing advice.
I learnt a lot from the 299 Steps To Website.
It also gave me several "But of course, you idiot" moments when I realised why my Business Coaching blog has fallen down the Google.com rankings for business coaching. Sometimes it is good to be reminded of the basics because otherwise, I can try to be too clever for my own good.
You can order 299 Steps For Website Heaven directly from Nikki Pilkington or you could watch the tips be identified at the rate of about two per week on my Online Profits blog as Nikki has agreed that I can re-publish them.
Better to buy the book I think.
Ebook or Proper Book?
I bought the ebook but it does have its advantages and disadvantages.
You get access to it immediately after you have paid and as it is delivered as a PDF, the links to various recommended websites are click-able which is a definite plus.
The downside is that it is 150 pages long as an A4 PDF. That is a lot of paper if you decide you want to read it as a hard copy and I like proper books.
Decide which version you want and click on the link and buy 299 Steps For Website Heaven.
Update - the ebook version is now available for free from my Online Profits blog
To make things easy I have added my Online Profits newsletter sign up below
Thanks Paul, for a great review - you were one of the first to buy the book and i'm glad it's helping you out!
Have taken on board the comments about improvements and added them to the to-do list!
Posted by: Nikki Pilkington | April 30, 2008 at 10:20 AM
Hey Paul, nice site you have going here. Keep up the good work. One thing that I think would help your blog would be instead of having categories for 1-5 stars, implement a star rating system like how i did with my site and the ratings.
-dave
Posted by: David Ahmad | July 15, 2008 at 10:00 AM