The Chinese edition was jointly published by O'Reilly Media and China Machine Press in late 2009. Edited by Karen Montgomery and translated by Nathan Li this Chinese edition is a first for my books, Speed Up Your Site was translated into Czech, French, Korean, Polish, and Spanish, but never Chinese.
Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine and Conversion Rate Secrets
Simplified Chinese Edition
ISBN: 978-7-111-26908-3
Pages: 350
Published: 2009
Publisher: O'Reilly Media and China Machine Press
http://www.china-pub.com/196163
The new Polish translation of our book arrived in the mail last week.Translated by Radoslaw Meryk, the Polish translation is 386 pages and published by O'Reilly Media and Helion S. A. in 2009.
Optymalizacja serwisów internetowych (Website Optimization)
Polish edition
ISBN: 978-83-246-2087-6
Page: 386
Published: 2009
O'Reilly and Helion S. A.
Nathan Li (a.k.a. Nasi) is an software architect at Umessage (partner and service provider of China Mobile). He started his computing career in Baidu.com, where he was responsible for developing and maintaining web crawler for the world's largest Chinese search engine. He is also the lead editor of Ruby community at InfoQ China, and a co-author of Google API Complete.
Nathan received a BS in Computer Science and Technology from Northeastern University (China). He is interested in search engines, large-scale distributed systems and guitar playing.
]]>A Few Book Reviews - Some Social Media, Some Search and a Little Optimization for Good Measure, August 25, 2009.
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Figure 1: Page Speed analyzing CNN.com
Since Steve Souders moved from Yahoo! to Google, it is likely he had a hand in this handy tool. For more information and to download the free add-on goto:
We'll take a more in-depth look in a future speed tweak.
]]>The homepage of the Stephen Jacob show is at:
Welcome to LITR radio show and VoiceAmerica talk radio and the show is available at: interview with Andy King.]]>
"The author has presented the content in a lucid style with the help of relevant diagrams and screenshots. I myself learned few tips with the help of Andy's book. I would prefer to view the coverage of optimizing those websites which are powered with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, Community Server and other similar web applications in the next edition of the book.
A key advantage of the book is that you can not only learn SEO but also other optimization techniques to place your sites very well in search engines. I feel that author has outlined his personal experiences in various chapters of the book and I have no hesitation to give this book a five star (*****) rating."
Thanks Anand! We have received a number of requests for CMS-based tips on SEO and performance, we plan on including these topics in the next edition. For the full review, see:
Review - Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine and Conversion Rate Secrets
]]>"If you're at all involved in website creation or content, you should definitely check this book out. Website Optimization by Andrew B. King is a comprehensive resource that can help web designers and developers build better and speedier sites that engage users and drive traffic. That's the simple truth."
"...The book is also chock full of tips and tricks on how to optimize graphics, build better pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing campaigns, and write keyword-rich, benefits-driven copy that incites user action, so it isn't just about the code." It is an O'Reilly book, after all.
Tim gives a few nits, including introducing terms before they are defined, lack of Flash SEO information, and the design of the companion site. Tim will be happy to hear that we are working on addressing all of these issues, and have a new design in the works.
For the full review see:
]]>"King's book makes it possible for any business to improve its online performance.
The book is divided into two major sections: Search Engine Marketing Optimization and Web Performance Optimization. It pays for itself in the first 50 pages - two chapters covering natural search engine optimization and an organic search case study. While much of the material here is well-covered in blogs and other books, even experienced SEOs are likely to find a few new ideas here."
Pick does have a few bones to pick about the SEO portion of the book. We've found that SEO is the most controversial topic to research and write about, as the algorithms change frequently. Also, conventional wisdom colors many of the guidelines you read about on and off the Internet. When we wrote the book, we were careful to cite trends and guidelines that had empirical evidence behind them, or experience with actual clients.
One guideline that Pick takes issue with is the relationship between inlinks, PageRank, and the rank of a page. We show in the book that the rank of a page is related to its PageRank and PageRank is related to inlinks. In our experience, especially among competitive keyphrases, the number and PageRank of inlinks usually trumps onsite optimization and is the most important factor for high rankings.
There are exceptions of course, for lower PageRank topics (like the one he mentions for call center M&A) onsite optimization can bump a lower PageRank site above a higher PageRank site (PR 2 ranks higher than PR 3). That is the beauty of SEO and one reason why companies hire SEO firms, to out-optimize their sites in the quest for higher rankings. However, while both onsite and offsite optimization are important factors, in general we have found that a higher number (and quality) of inlinks is a more important factor than onsite optimization. Higher PageRank (and thus inlinks/quality) has been shown to correlate with higher rankings (see the SEO chapter for cites).
Pick also disputes our recommendation of paying for links. What I was referring to was places like Yahoo.com (pay for a faster review), Business.com (ditto), and Superpages.com and Yellowpages.com. These sites, especially the online directories, are factored into Google Local results as well as natural results so offer a double whammy. We've also been experimenting with paying for links on blogs, with favorable results. What you don't want to do is pay for links that are temporary, or rotate in and out using an advertising system. You also want to avoid non-relevant links, ideally acquire links from sites related to your topic areas. Finally, avoid low PageRank inlinks, and strive for high PageRank inlinks, these will get you higher rankings (and PageRank) faster.
As for outlinks, avoid linking to any sites with gray PageRank bars (in the Google Toolbar). A page with a gray PageRank bar has raised a red flag for Google due to linking to another gray PageRank site, or using tactics that Google's algorithm objects to (keyword stuffing, duplicate content, etc.).
For the full review see:
]]>]]>"...the King title is more suited for academic libraries that have strong computer science and communication collections while the Eisenberg book is more suited for public libraries. Both could be good resources for corporate libraries that need to support online companies.
"Overall the book is well-written and produced. Although it has some gaps, what is described is done well, with a clear style and plenty of practical examples. Given the level of detailed information, the book is good value for money. I recommend it."
The gaps that Simon refers to are on the back-end side of websites. Since about 80% of web performance problems are due to the front-end, we focused on these areas, although the backend is covered in the Advanced Web Performance Chapter.
For the full review see:
]]>"Anyone who takes website optimization seriously, and is committed to improving online results, should read Andy King's Website Optimization.
It is not a lazy afternoon read. It delivers a bit more than thought provoking entertainment. You can, however, easily read this book section by section in the order they interest you.
This book has brought my own website optimization skills up several notches.
It is extremely useful. And it provides a depth of information I have not found in any other book."
For the full review see:
]]>The available SEM tips, especially online, is rife with best practices that practitioners are pretty sure are true, but haven't yet proven. We were careful to report on SEO best practices that we've found to work through actual client experience, or empirical tests. The only exception is the SEOMoz.org SEO top positive and negative ranking factors derived from a survey of SEO experts (page 16).
Depending on your interest as a marketer or developer, people tend to like the first or second part of the book better. Gabriel seems to like the second half of the book about web site performance:
"I'm surprised that even though the book covers so many areas it still manages to penetrate each topic pretty deep. Naturally not as deep as a book totally devoted to one of these topics, but still it manages to do more than merely scratch the surface.
The second part of the book about optimizing web performance was really good. The chapters about how to optimize HTML and CSS contained several useful tips as well as references to different tools and resources. The chapter I'm particularly excited about is the one about how to optimize AJAX solutions. It presented me with new concepts and ideas that I found really useful."
For the full review, see:
]]>"This book contains in-depth information related to every aspect of your website, and how you can turn your website into something that works for you and, ultimately, achieves the goals you set in the beginning.... The core of this book will help you, no matter what the goal of your website. Andy King has done an incredible job of thoroughly covering the areas of performance, optimizing these areas, and then properly analyzing the results."
For the full review see:
Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine and Conversion Rate Secrets
]]>"This is the kind of book I wish had been available earlier in my career. But it's here now and it's a Wish List addition for those of you who like books and learning from them....
Give yourself a gift this holiday season by exploring new ways to enhance your web site. When you're done with this book, you'll be even closer to becoming that miraculous web site development employee from heaven companies are scouting the Internet for.:
For the full review see:
]]>"Where "WSO" shines is in the more non-tech sections, specifically on Web content and layout. King draws on loads of academic and market research knowledge to illustrate why the proper configuration of HTML, professional-level copywriting, and polished design is essential to effective optimization."
For the full review see:
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