"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

"Ext JS 4 First Look" and "Mastering Ext JS" - book review

Hello. In this post I shall explain my thoughts on two books, Ext JS 4 First Look and Mastering Ext JS written by loiane Groner.

Ext JS 4 First Look

It is an intruductory book for Ext JS 4 framework, specifically version 4.2. You can find lot of comments and posts across the Internet about previous version of Ext JS 4, 4.0 and 4.1, it is said that were buggy. So my advice is use Ext JS 4.2 for your future projects. Not sure about Ext JS 5, it is a new release.

In about 300 pages Loiane managed to cover all aspects of Ext JS 4 framework. It has lot of useful information and you can get a general understanding about the framework's capabilities. However is a bit techincal, so I recommend reading each chapter at least twice. It also a good practice to try and write the code from the book on the a real machine and see how it works. From this point of view I think it needs more code examples. So if you want to learn Ext JS 4 framework, I think this book is a good start. 4/5

Mastering Ext JS

In this second book about Ext JS 4 you get to develop real world Ext JS 4 based application (using sakila sample database). It has lot of code and reading it is a bit dificult task since you need to understand what the code does. While reading it I set up my working environment and started coding from the book. It begins ok, all things that were necessary were covered in the book. However when you get deep into it like 150 pages which is middle of the book, you can clearly see that some application modules are not finished, or a code is missing. I managed to find code base here. It easens up things a little, if you copy code form github. But I also found that some php files had commented code and weren't working. It has a bit of inconsistency with the book. You get the feeling it is not made for beginner web developer :) I managed to find solutions to most of the problems while developing my practice app here: http://masteringextjs-practices.rhcloud.com/ but that was the case because I already knew PHP 5, firebug, MVC architecture, Aptana, JavaScript basics, html etc...

- still in development. Use vlado as user and 123456 as password to log in. You can change to different language, now English US and MK(Macedonian) available. If you get loading errors or it doesn't want to show up, refresh the tab. Still things to be done. 

Notes: 

• Some php file had commented code out in the github package. Why should I bother understanding what the php code does when I learn Ext JS?

• It happened to build a production version of the app and when uploaded to server it doesn't work as it works locally. Charts aren't drawn, login window stays after loging in, loading notification stays forever.  Not sure why it does that, a testing is neccesarry. Ok I set up Siesta as mentioned in chapter 12 - Debugging and Testing, I run the test from the book and get error Application.js not found in Firebug. :) Ok I deployed (prebuild app) masteringextjs4 zip package from github to my server and try the tests, some strange error appears, "j is undefined" :D So now I cannot test even the prebuilt application. Maybe I have missed to read some guide or whatever, but overall I am a bit lost as Ext JS beginner.

I give points for ingenuity. Really good use of available learning resources like Sakila sample database. You will get to work with MySQL db, MySQL Workbench, exporting/importing data. Also PhpMyAdmin which is a really good admin tool.

All in all it is a good book, but you will not learn much if you don't code the code yourself and try to debug yourself. It is very techincal and as I said cover each chapter twice. Once reading, once, coding. It contains lot of general information about Ext JS 4 and lot of advices about tools to develop. According to my experience reading it I give it 3.75/5