Review: Google Snatch Ebook
Posted on November 1, 2007 by
Dee Barizo
Reviews, SEO
12 Comments
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.
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mmmmm….maybe give this a miss then. I don’t think anyone has created a really great SEO book yet. Atleast I haven’t seen it anyway..
Neither seo book is not one of those what you would call a good seo book ? Oh well, in that case you a hard-to-satisfy guy ;)
Anyway if I get the time I will give them a try and see whats cookin’ , of course when SEO is in discussion many books will look a like but the difference is how the author places in acts the techniques which would be a really valuable information.
Hello… Did you really mean to link to Fooglesnatch.com instead of Googlesnatch.com ?
Just the same, thank you for your balanced review. I like the Pros vs Cons sections.
Thanks for the positive feedback :) I appreciate it.
Fooglesnatch.com redirects to an affiliate link.
That was a great review and saved me $97. Thanks so much. Does he mention anything about the importance of anchor text in the link building section?
Good question. He didn’t talk much about anchor text. When he did, it was mostly referring to varying your anchor text using the keyword variations and related terms.
Good review. Well balanced and informative. Nice change from the affiliate-driven hype going around. I agree with the points you raised. I found GN a big disappointment. For $97, I expected some cutting-edge info, as the sales page promised. It didn’t deliver. Instead I got SEO techniques which have been around for years.
Save your money.
Cheers
Steve
Web Business Solutions
I did a bit of reverse engineering of his own website (he gives it in his promotional material) before I would buy googlesnatch and found out by myself about the keyword structure of his method. With a few other things I found out I won’t buy the book. I have enough. Gurus don’t give their own niche website for you to reverse engineer. That is a bit mistake.
Look at my website I got PR3 on the index and PR2 on most of my pages just by linking a few on blogs. I have not spent more than one hour to get to this level. Google gave my website that PR rank within a month
Nice review. Will skip Google Snatch now. I was expecting some more advanced info from it, but it seems to be the same old rehashed information.