Professional Search engine optimization with PHP: A Developer’s Guide to SEO by Jaimie Sirovich Cristian Darie
Book Description
Maybe you’re a great programmer or IT professional, but marketing isn’t your thing. Or perhaps you’re a tech-savvy search engine marketer who wants a peek under the hood of a search engine optimized web site. Search engine marketing is a field where technology and marketing are both critical and interdependent, because small changes in the implementation of a web site can make you or break you in search engine rankings. Furthermore, the fusion of technology and marketing know-how can create web site features that attract more visitors.
The mission of this book is to help web developers create web sites that rank well with the major search engines, and to teach search engine marketers how to use technology to their advantage. We assert that neither marketing nor IT can exist in a vacuum, and it is essential that they not see themselves as opposing forces in an organization. They must work together. This book aims to educate both sides in that regard.
Professional Search engine optimization with PHP
Search engine optimization (SEO) is not only the job of the marketing department. It must be considered from a web site’s inception and throughout its lifetime by you, the web site developer. Making changes to the architecture of a web site and modifying presentation techniques can dramatically increase search engine rankings and traffic levels.
Written for the PHP developer or tech-savvy marketer, this unique reference provides techniques for creating and maintaining web sites optimized for search engines. You’ll discover how to facilitate the indexing of your site, as well as how to leverage specific technologies and services for site promotion. You will understand the role of web site architecture in search engine optimization and explore various topics therein. Knowing this will help you to develop a site that achieves great search engine rankings. Finally, you’ll apply this knowledge by creating a sample e-commerce catalog and an optimized WordPress blog.
What you will learn from this book
Who this book is for
This book is for PHP developers who need to incorporate search engine optimization principles into their web applications, as well as marketers who want to gain a better understanding of the technologies involved in search engine marketing.
Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.
A must read for PHP developers who develop commercial websites
Most websites are developed without SEO in mind. They are often developed by teams that have a very deep knowledge and understanding about programming websites and applications, databases and also general business and e-commerce. A large (if not the most) number of those teams only have little or no knowledge of SEO at all. The result is a website that might violates some of the very basic rules of creating a site that is well accessible and understandable for the human visitors as well as the non-human visitors (the search engine spiders or crawlers).
Changing a site after it is live and around for a while, when somebody realizes that search engine traffic is not the way it should be, can be very costly and in the worst cases may be even require an almost entire rewrite of the website code.
That’s why is it important that not only marketers are being educated about the benefits and principles of search engine optimization, but the people that build websites as well. Who builds websites? Web developers. This book was written exactly for this audience, but also a SEO who knows most of the information to SEO provided in the book could benefit from this book. It includes a lot of very practical PHP sample source code for ready to use tools that can help marketers in their daily routine.
Although a lot of the content is not PHP specific are other parts that are using a lot of sample source code to demonstrate possible solutions, specific for Apache web servers (.htaccess), PHP and MySQL Databases.
Great Book for Non-Programmers Too!
Running a successful search engine optimization firm means that I have to have a solid understanding in numerous coding strategies that can play a role in an SEO campaign.
This is a book written by programmers for programmers. Rarely will you go more than a couple of pages without getting an in-depth look at php code illustrating just how certain jobs are done. But that should not dissuade the non-programmer. Going through this book I did a good deal of skipping. I don’t need to know the code–wouldn’t understand it anyway–but what I did get was a solid grasp on how PHP can be an extremely effective tool in a search engine optimization campaign.
So what can you learn in a book about PHP without knowing PHP? You’ll get a crash course in creating search engine friendly URLs, redirects, duplicate content, search friendly html, web feeds, sitemaps, link bait, cloaking and a whole lot in between. For the non-programmer I found all the things that you can do with PHP fascinating. The concepts here are nothing new but I’m certain my programmers will find information in here that they can apply liberally throughout our client campaigns.
Solid PHP How-To
Last year, I reviewed the book
Jaimie Sirovich is a self-titled “SEO Egghead” and is a hybrid programmer turned search engine marketer. What makes him uniquely qualified is that he understands the tech side of SEO and isn’t just a slimey snake oil salesman who spouts off conjecture. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
Cristian Darie is a software engineer and PhD student, currently studying distributed application architecture for his dissertation. He has published several books on a variety of web topics - including: