Optimize by Lee Odden, A Book Review

A Look at Optimize by Lee Odden

Optimize by Lee Odden was not an unfamiliar concept. I have read about search engine optimization on countless websites and in any number of books already.

But I don’t think I ever truly understood it until now. Lee Odden has taken an almost mysterious concept and made it comprehensible. I definitely liked Optimize.

SEO, According to Lee Odden

Google doesn’t have a lot of options for its spider bots when it comes to reading your content. It can read your text. And that’s about it.

While there are, I am sure, plans to try to make it so that Google can better read flash, PDFs, PowerPoint slides, Images, and Videos, the truth is, it’s currently pretty much all letters and numbers.  That will eventually change, but right now that’s it.

Hence Google doesn’t know that the picture you added to your blog is an image of, say, Dame Judi Dench. It needs a caption. Sounds obvious, right? But I wasn’t doing that, not with this blog and not with my writing site or anywhere else.  Oops.

And that caption should be obvious, in order to serve the search bots, and informative and conversational, in order to serve your human readers/audience.

Who or What Should You Optimize For? Bots or People?

Both. And fortunately, they don’t conflict. Hence if you add keywords, tags, or categories to your webpage, blog post, etc., then if you can reiterate the keywords, etc. within the content, you’ve got it made. And you need to look around wherever you are posting, and use every available square inch for your optimization efforts. This does not mean that you cover every single pixel!

Rather, it means that, if you have a space for a caption, use it. If you have a space for tags, write them. Blogs have categories. So make them meaningful, and use them. Hence I finally feel I get it. And that is a wonderful feeling.

Rating

Review: 5/5 stars.

---

Want More Book Reviews?

If my experiences with book reviews for social media resonate with you, then check out my other book review articles.

Check Out Book Reviews on Social Media, SEO, Analytics, Design, and Strategy

• Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics 2.0, a Book Review
† The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10th Anniversary Edition, a Book Review
• Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky, A Book Review
† Content Nation by John Blossom, A Book Review
• Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson, a Book Review
† Google Advertising Tools by Harold Davis, a Book Review
• Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, An Updated Book Review
† Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk

• Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen
† Michael Fleischner’s SEO Made Simple, a Book Review
• The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, A Book Review
† The Numerati by Stephen Baker, a Book Review
• Optimize by Lee Odden, A Book Review
† Social Media Marketing by Liana Evans, A Book Review
• Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, a Book Review
† White Space is not your Enemy by Kim Golombisky and Rebecca Hagen, a Book Review
• The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Hyder Kabani, a Book Review

Next article