NetBusinessBlog

Review: Google Snatch Ebook

Posted on 01. Nov, 2007 by Dave in Business

I’ve been asked to do a review for this ebook called Google Snatch. The book is pretty long. It’s 120 pages. I don’t want to write an super long review, so let’s jump right in with the review. I’ll keep it simple. I’ll give a quick overview and then talk about the pros and cons.

Quick Overview

Don’t be confused by the subtitle of Google Snatch, “The FREE Click Formula”. Google Snatch is basically an SEO book. It’s a book that claims to help you achieve better rankings on Google. There are chapters on keyword research, site structure, link building, and content.

Pros

The author, Latif, gave a lot of emphasis on keyword research. Keyword research seems to be underrated among search marketers. Also, search marketers don’t talk about it much even though it’s important for SEO. I’m glad Latif devoted much of his ebook on this topic.

Also, he talked about adding related keywords, keyword variations, and synonyms in your content. For example, if you have a page targeting the keyword weight loss, you should add related keywords like weight loss product, easy weight loss, and fast weight loss. This is a great tactic because it allows your pages to rank for multiple keywords. And it helps you avoid keyword spam. Keyword spam can lead to a Google penalty.

Another pro Latif had was site structure. He gave a practical example with pictures of a good site structure and he had good methods for structuring your site based on your keyword research. A good site structure is important because it makes your site easy for Google to explore (the SEO technical term is to crawl or to spider). Also, a good site structure makes it easy for visitors to search through your site.

I appreciated Latif’s section on reciprocal link requests. He gave great principles on how to do it and he included a good example.

The last pro is avoiding duplicate content. Latif wrote about avoiding duplicate content by spinning articles. You can take an article and modify it multiple times to make them unique. This helps you when you’re submitting articles to multiple article directories. Also, he talked about making your directory submissions unique. Too many people submit to directories with the same site description. Vary your site descriptions using different keywords and you’ll get more traffic from directories.

Cons

Latif did talk about keyword research but one thing I found curious was he really didn’t give any specific ways on how to do keyword research. He would say keyword research is important and then he would go on to give examples of keywords he found. However, he never said how he found those keywords. He never wrote about his criteria for choosing those keywords. And he didn’t give any recommendations for keyword tools. So, while I appreciate his emphasis on keyword research, I wish he would’ve shown us how to do it.

Another con was Latif’s incomplete section on link building. Since Google Snatch is an SEO book, I expected a lot of talk about links. SEO, in my opinion, is at least 70% link building. However, Latif’s link building section missed out on some of the most effective link building tactics. He didn’t talk about leveraging social media. He didn’t talk about networking with other webmasters. He didn’t talk about targeting quality sites. He didn’t talk about writing guest articles.

Instead, he talked about writing articles, submitting them to article directories, and submitting your site to directories. These are valid link building methods, but they are not as effective as the previous methods. Latif also talked about reciprocal linking. Again, reciprocal linking is not a bad link building method, but I wouldn’t spend too much time doing it. Reciprocal links seem to have a lot less weight on Google than one way links. Also, you can get penalized if you overdo reciprocal links.

My last cons in the ebook were the misspellings, lack of flow, and hype. There weren’t too many misspellings for a 120 page ebook, but the few misspellings were still annoying. If you’re gonna sell a ebook, make sure to spell check and proofread multiple times. The ebook didn’t seem to flow very well. Oftentimes I couldn’t tell how each section related to other sections. At some points, there was too much hype. I guess you can expect that with most internet marketing ebooks and Google Snatch wasn’t as bad as others. However, hype is still annoying to me. If you’re going to write an SEO book, you should steer clear from hype. That would set you apart from the other “hyped up” ebooks. Also, too much hype doesn’t look professional to me.

Conclusion

I’ve given you the pros of Google Snatch. If you want to learn about site structure, Google Snatch has great info. Also, it has good tips for avoiding duplicate content. And the ebook will remind you to use keyword research by adding related terms, variations, and synonyms on your pages.

I’ve also given you the cons. This book is definitely not a great resource for link building or how to find profitable keywords

Google Snatch is priced at $97. That seems pricey to me. Even if you like the pros of Google Snatch, I think a better price is in the 30 to 40 dollar range.

Learn more about Google Snatch.