Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET

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Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET

Professional SearchEngine Optimization with ASP.NET by Cristian Darie and Jaimie Sirovich(published by Wrox) was, for me, an immensely interesting peek into howmodern-day search engines work, what crawlers do and do not look for, and howto architect and organize your site to leverage search engines to the fullest.This book takes a very developer-centric approach on architecting sites for the other browser . It begins by taking the reader through setting up a samplesite in IIS, and setting up a SQL Server Express instance to service theplayground site. From there, this sample site is used throughout the book todemonstrate the various techniques discussed.

This book can be separated into two subject areas:techniques that the various search engines use to weigh, rank, and crawl sitesand techniques that developers can employ to better take advantage of thealgorithms and factors that go into determining a site s position. The bulk ofthe book focuses on the first set of techniques. Chapters 2 through 12 dealwith how search engines work and what elements of a site either promote orpenalize its rank on a search engine. These topics include items like how tocreate search-engine-friendly URLs, HTML, and JavaScript, and how to deal withcontent relocation and duplicate content. In addition, there are chaptersspecific to foreign language SEO techniques for multi-lingual sites. One thingto note about these first chapters in the book: The examples and techniques aresomewhat Google-biased. This is understandable given its current popularity andreach. The authors do include other search engines, and call them outspecifically, but the content in the book is primarily orchestrated to help youfare better with Google.

The latter chapters are more tactically focused than theearlier ones. These chapters deal with technical issues one might encounterwhen running a site (such as changing Web hosts without affecting your searchranking). In addition, there is a full case study on how to build an e-Commercestore and how to optimize not only the page elements but also the commercecatalog itself. The last chapter of the book gives suggestions on how toenhance preexisting sites to better optimize them for search engines.

As a Web application developer, I was exactly the audiencethis book targets: developers who build applications without giving a thoughtas to how a search engine might interpret the site. I found the chapters on howsearch engines function to be a very interesting read and I m willing to betthat most developers don t really understand what helps and hurts a site from asearch engine perspective. This book is a cover-to-cover type of read ratherthan a reference manual. It s good to have a cursory understanding of theinformation presented so that when building new Web applications, they can bearchitected from the ground up to be search-engine friendly. At around 400pages, it s an easy read and highly recommended if you want to better prepareyour sites for being indexed by a search engine.

Matt Dinovo

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Title: Professional Search Engine Optimization withASP.NET

Authors:Cristian Darie, Jaimie Sirovich

Publisher: Wrox

ISBN: 978-0-470-13147-3

Web Site: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0470131470.html

Price: US$39.99

Page Count: 410