Search Engine Marketing [Miro's Review]
This our second MBE:BE review from Miro Slodki, who liked Search Engine Marketing by Andreas Ramos & Stephanie Cota much better than his first book. Here's his review:
I enjoyed this book considerably.
Often times, the how-to genre is hobbled by an endless litany of screen shots, menu selections, options etc. that, while imparting data, tends to encourage skimming.
The authors did a good job of bridging this with smart tips and links to additional information sources. In fact, I found the greatest value of the book lay in its insights and perspectives from industry leaders Google, Ominture, Coremetrics.
Given the pace of evolution in the SEM/SEO/PPC worlds, I would suggest they integrate a blog with their next edition - to maintain linkages with their reading community and bring current updates in strategies and tactics.
The time the book spent on helping readers calculate their costs per
action/lead (CPA,CPL) is perhaps the most important understanding a
user needs to internalize. I felt this section could easily have been
doubled to cover more of the issues in metrics, imparting a deeper
appreciation of the roles different funneling metrics have in meeting
different business objectives. Their espoused "results orientation",
while eminently pragmatic, tends to bias the perspective toward
price-based transactional outcomes.
Given that some studies indicate that search behaviour between Informational, Navigational and Transactional search intentions has an 80%,10%,10% skew,- the book probably would have benefited from a similar how-to content alignment to reflect consumer objective centricity as opposed to its user/task centricity.
My overall rating of Search Engine Marketing is 7.5 out of 10
More information
- Author Site:
- Book Site: Insider SEM
- McGraw Hill | Chapters.ca | Amazon.com
- ISBN-10: 0071597336
- ISBN-13: 978-0071597333
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