"Search Engine Optimization made easy" by Brad Callen - book review

In this post I will share my thoughts on a book called "Search Engine Optimization made easy" by Brad Callen. I don't know when it was published because it is not stated in it, nor I could find on the Internet. There are some PDFs circling around for free :)
This book is more like a beginner’s guide to SEO. It gives a glimpse into all necessary things that optimizing a web site may include. It gives general strategies how and where to start optimizing your web site and it is a good tool if you don't have time to read large books like 300 to 600 pages. But some aspects of SEO are not thoroughly covered with theory so some things may be still unclear even if you read the book twice without using information from Internet. For example there is explanation how to calculate Google's page rank and it mentions some iterations of the same formula with different values but I couldn't figure out how those different values are calculated.
Also some of the tools/links recommended in the book are obsolete and do not exist anymore, so you may have to search some things by yourself. For example the tool GoodKeywords mentioned for searching keywords related to a given keyword directly from Google doesn't exist anymore, or I simply couldn't figure out how today’s GoodKeywords software works. I used Google Trends instead.
The book however contains good exercises how to manually search info about specific websites and optimize yours better that those sites. There is a software called SEO Elite which does lot of work for you, and of course it is not free but may save you some time. However you can do all the job manually which is recommended as a practice. 
There are 10 chapters in about 90 pages and those include:

1. searching good keywords for your site/brand. Installing Google toolbar. Analyzing competitor's website's html code. 
2. Onpage optimiziation for your website, using <h1>, <h2>, alt image tag attribute, bolding, italicizing etc...
3. Getting started with offpage optimization. Never use Google's page submit form, neither MSN, Yahoo, Altavista, Alltheweb submit forms. Buying text links that point to your website. 
4. Offpage optimization criteria basics. Collecting useful information from Internet about competitor's SEO strategy. Using SEO Elite.
5. Contacting link sites for link sharing, using SEO Elite to contact 1000 link directory websites at once. Create link page withing your website. 
6. What things to consider so that you don't get banned by Google. Using hidden text, alt image tag spamming, meta tag stuffing, title tag stuffing.
7. Is your website linking banned websites aka bad neighbours? Make sure you don't link to bad neighbours so that your site don't get banned too by Google. Use SEO Elite to check for sites with PR 0. Using submit forms to link directory websites. 
8. Exercise chapter. Find out why Adobe's site is closely related to keyword: "click me" though you may think, isn't Adobe related to graphics design software, Photoshop etc...
9. Using alt image tag attribute to maintain good website structure. 
10. What Google's Page Rank is all about. Calculating formula for Page Rank. How do you calculate yours website page rank. Do not link websites that don't have reciprocal link to your website. Your page rank will suffer because of this.

As I mentioned earlier, it a very well made book and it works good if you are a SEO beginner. But because of not enough theory coverage some things may stay unclear. Therefore I give 3.7/5

Useful links:

http://www.keywordlocator.com/kwl/specials.html
http://www.wordtracker.com/
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/
http://www.linkadage.com/
http://www.matomyseo.com/
http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/
http://www.linkhub.info/submit.php
http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://www.seobook.com/

Next good read: http://www.amazon.com/SEO-Books-2013-2014-Optimization/lm/R2ZJ80G4COWMSZ