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Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET
Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET by Cristian Darie and Jaimie Sirovich (published by Wrox) was, for me, an immensely interesting peek into how modern-day search engines work, what crawlers do and do not look for, and how to architect and organize your site to leverage search engines to the fullest. This book takes a very developer-centric approach on architecting sites for the other browser . It begins by taking the reader through setting up a sample site in IIS, and setting up a SQL Server Express instance to service the playground site. From there, this sample site is used throughout the book to demonstrate the various techniques discussed.
This book can be separated into two subject areas: techniques that the various search engines use to weigh, rank, and crawl sites and techniques that developers can employ to better take advantage of the algorithms and factors that go into determining a site s position. The bulk of the book focuses on the first set of techniques. Chapters 2 through 12 deal with how search engines work and what elements of a site either promote or penalize its rank on a search engine. These topics include items like how to create search-engine-friendly URLs, HTML, and JavaScript, and how to deal with content relocation and duplicate content. In addition, there are chapters specific to foreign language SEO techniques for multi-lingual sites. One thing to note about these first chapters in the book: The examples and techniques are somewhat Google-biased. This is understandable given its current popularity and reach. The authors do include other search engines, and call them out specifically, but the content in the book is primarily orchestrated to help you fare better with Google.
The latter chapters are more tactically focused than the earlier ones. These chapters deal with technical issues one might encounter when running a site (such as changing Web hosts without affecting your search ranking). In addition, there is a full case study on how to build an e-Commerce store and how to optimize not only the page elements but also the commerce catalog itself. The last chapter of the book gives suggestions on how to enhance preexisting sites to better optimize them for search engines.
As a Web application developer, I was exactly the audience this book targets: developers who build applications without giving a thought as to how a search engine might interpret the site. I found the chapters on how search engines function to be a very interesting read and I m willing to bet that most developers don t really understand what helps and hurts a site from a search engine perspective. This book is a cover-to-cover type of read rather than a reference manual. It s good to have a cursory understanding of the information presented so that when building new Web applications, they can be architected from the ground up to be search-engine friendly. At around 400 pages, it s an easy read and highly recommended if you want to better prepare your sites for being indexed by a search engine.
Matt Dinovo
Rating:
Title: Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET
Authors: Cristian Darie, Jaimie Sirovich
Publisher: Wrox
ISBN: 978-0-470-13147-3
Web Site: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470131470.html
Price: US$39.99
Page Count: 410
