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This is a book about SEO.

If you’re a beginner and you’re trying to figure out what‘s the real meaning that stands behind this acronym – you may find the SEO world baffling. Thousands of information coming and leaving. Hundreds of strategies rising and falling. A noisy world where everybody talks about everything that matters for SEO.

If you are a practitioner of SEO, you may say “A book about SEO? This is such a waste of time. To be up to date this book should be written …tomorrow!” And you aren’t far from the truth.

But, above all these, even though you’re a beginner or an experienced specialist in SEO, reading this book will help you a lot in figuring it out how things really work in this tricky field.

When it comes to SEO we are surrounded by skeptical people that still don’t believe in promotion.

SEO STRATEGY / SEO LIKE I’M 5

'SEO is like an ATM machine: you get out as much as you put in.' @SearchDecoder Click To Tweet

Matthew Capala’s book seems to stand under a conclusive motto that makes things much more clear for the skeptics :

'Invisibility is a fate much worse than failures.' @SearchDecoder Click To Tweet

Matthew Capala is an Internet entrepreneur, growth consultant, international speaker, trainer and author. He has a large and relevant portfolio especially for SEO and marketing. Projects like Alphametic or SearchDecoder wear his signature. Brands as L’Oreal, Apple, LG, Western Union – were helped in achieving some online growth. The list for his proved experience is much longer. And in various fields.

The book’s main ideas are structured around 5 Cs SEO of success:

CONTENT

CODE

CREDIBILITY

CONNECTIONS

CASH

Usually when I read about “content”, I find plenty of standard phrases to describe it as: “good content’, “unique content”, “a content that stands out”….

After 2 or 3 articles based on truisms like this, I feel pretty much tired – too much words about content, too less actionable things on how to achieve it.

Fortunately this book really brings something new on this topic. Filled with great examples and stunning nuggets – the content part will not only make you smile, after reading it you’ll realize soon enough that you finally get the point.

Take a look at 3 things you may not know about your content:

• “Your content needs to become the guiding star of your online presence.”
• “Your content establishes your worth.”
• “Content articulates what you have to offer.”

There are some questions in this book – and especially in this part – that will definitely catch your attention. Questions such as:

What is the best way to provide something of value?

How can you measure content performance?

How can you become someone worth talking about?

What is the role of content curation?

I won’t waste lines here on giving the answers from this book. I don’t want to miss a thing and spoil the great message by a few selected words. I’m pretty sure you’re interested in finding by yourself Matthew Capala ‘s answers.

But I can’t help myself from  sharing with you a great list about 10 habits of rock stars bloggers:

#1 Rock star bloggers chase their passions, not dollars.

#2 Rock star bloggers believe in themselves.

#3 Rock star bloggers play the long-term game.

#4 Rock star bloggers embrace failure as a part of the process.

#5 Rock star bloggers are more interested in others than in themselves.

#6 Rock star bloggers are very hard workers.

#7 Rock star bloggers respond to every tweet and comment.

#8 Rock star bloggers are relationship builders.

#9 Rock star bloggers are empirical.

#10 Rock star bloggers constantly read, learn, test, and experiment.

When I’ve first saw the title of the second part of this book – CODE – I confess, I was a little bit scared. My first thought was “This really is beyond me!”

You may feel the same way. So, chill out – things aren’t as complicated as they seem. But you still have to be basically familiar with some technical terms – specific for SEO – as: meta description, URL structure, alt text, tags, etc. Knowing something about these may help you see the Web through the eyes of Google.

At this point, Matthew Capala gives us a real helping hand in understanding better how things work. He also provides some great “tools” that allow us to see our websites as engines see it (for example SEO browser). Real gold, in my opinion.

And speaking of gold, you will be certainly interested by this particular chapter: Mining Golden Nugget Keywords. And not only because your first thought was at our mining golden nuggets. (Just kidding…or not).

You’ll be interested by this part especially because here Capala is talking about why, when and how you should develop your list of keywords.

The most tempting for any beginner is to use generic keywords.

Is this right or wrong?

Capala says it as clear as possible:

“Golden nugget keywords are not <generic> keywords. Competition for generic keywords is fierce and getting visibility is expensive. “

Take a look at the following questions:

• What keywords are your customers likely to use to find you?
• What keywords are your competitors using?
• Do these keywords attract buyers or content consumers?
• Do your keywords get enough searches?

If you have answers for each of these questions – take a piece of paper, write them down and then check what Matthew Capala says in his book.

If you don’t know the answers for all the questions above – take your clues from this chapter of SEO like I’m 5.

From now on be prepared to have a wise journey through some great topic that, I’m sure, you worry about all the time:

• Keyword funnel and mapping – some of the information provided in this part are related to how to map keywords on your content, how to build an SEO-friendly site structure or how to use internal links
• Which is the best approach in optimizing your site – all you need to know about page title tag, meta description tag, alt tag and URL structure.
• If speed is important how quick can you get a fast website? “Google loves fast website.” There might be no news in this nugget. But plenty of tools are waiting to be chosen in order to bring your website in perfect love and harmony with Google, You already know that Google is like a clever but capricious lady – so, if you want to make her happy, you have to “guess” what she really wants.
• The SEO technical audit – is a very important part of your work. Great info and a useful list of tools are provided here. All you have to do is read, write some ideas down and test them. The prerequisite is quite simple:

'You need to look at a website from the perspective of a user' @SearchDecoder Click To Tweet

• Feeding the Hummingbird right may bring you great results. So, read in this chapter how does hummingbird work and how to do it right.
• Using schema for non-techies – what is a schema and how it will look like in the future – those are the main ideas from this chapter

When it comes to CREDIBILITY, despite the moral and debatable meaning of this concept – things are almost mathematical:

'Credibility = High-Quality Links to Your Site' @SearchDecoder Click To Tweet

There are 7 MUST DOs in your way of achieving credibility:

1. Build your credibility beyond the Internet
2. Focus on quality over quantity
3. Establish credibility with patience in mind
4. Measure your credibility
5. Make a link-building game plan
6. Earn high –quality backlinks
7. Do your guest blogging right

“Content. Code. Credibility. They’re essential, but to achieve true visibility on the Internet, you need Connections, our 4th ‘C.’”

When you say connections in a SEO context first thing that comes in your mind would be: SOCIAL MEDIA.

And the answer is perfectly correct. So, this part is all about social media. But from an actionable point of view with plenty useful information about how to:

• … design a winning strategy in Social Media’s world
• … build communities
• … brand yourself
• … identify & use the most effective and actionable social media hacks.

The final goal for almost all the things we usually do is…MONEY. You’re doing SEO and living intensely on the online for this. Matthew Capala agrees more than you think:

“Got traffic? Time to make some cash”

And the CASH part is about how to use website monetization models, how to make money from your blog and what rules you should obey if you want to stay in this game.

At this point my book summary is about to end. But your successful story is just about to begin.

We’ve had a run through SEO like I’m 5’ ‘s main parts, main concepts and main actionable things. It’s your turn now to design your own journey. And, as I’ve already proved to you, Matthew Capala ‘s book may be really helpful for you in doing that

So, don’t waste any more time. The online world is in a continuous movement. You have to adapt fast, catch the run and get your business closer to success.

And, whenever you need more energy supplies, stick a nugget to your goals. May be the best pill of courage you’ve ever tried.

Emir Zecovic

Emir is the Head of Marketing at 12min. In his spare time, he loves to meditate and play soccer.