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A good number of people have asked me what I thought of Stomping the Search Engines, but I had not got it until recently.
Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon are strong marketers, and due to:
- Their price point (high enough to grab the interest of guys like Ken McCarthy)
- the friendships they have made with many well known marketers
- the quality of their product
they were able to make sure their product was distributed far and wide. On to the review:
Things I Like about Stomping the Search Engines:
- Comes in audio format. Some people learn better from audio recordings than from reading.
- I think Brad used to be a lawyer and Andy used to be a DJ, so the CDs have a great conversational tone.
- Emphasizes research vs buying terms in the keyword research portion.
- Talks about measuring competitiveness of a term or market, and chosing the best terms to market from that information.
- Focuses on creating a business instead of just doing SEO. Most SEO information products don't do that.
- Does not promote worthless techniques like worrying too much about keyword density.
- Mentions that if all a pages details (page title, headings, content, internal linkage) are aligned too tightly then some search algorithms may view that as spam and discount that.
- Gives lots of good examples of ideas for writing press releases and how they can help you in your optimization.
- Both Brad and Andy have successful businesses and use some of their real life examples, although they each outed a competing site in Stomping the Search Engines ;)
- They both know a decent amount about the topic, so if Brad or Andy grazed over an issue the other covered it.
- Good amount of tips on link building and pay per click marketing.
- Emphasized looking at what others were doing and why they were there instead of trying to give abstract flavor of the day tips.
- Came with a bonus PDF guide which offers some of the tips they went over in the audio files.
- They kept most of it general enough to where it would not be instantly outdated.
Things I Thought could be improved with Stomping the Search Engines:
- Recommends using Google for link: for link research. Back when he started the course it usually showed the higher PR links, but Google has since changed that. In all fairness it is hard to update an 8 hour long audio file.
- Early on they stated you can double Overture suggested search volume to get total search volume, and does not discuss why / how keyword research data may have errors. He later mentions WordTracker, Google Search Term Suggestion tool, internal site data mining, and other keyword research tools & ideas.
- At one point Brad says there is one Google algorithm, which may not be true. Google may rotate algorithms, and different query types may trigger different algorithms.
Also some community based technologies, like Google Hilltop, which may or may not be in use, only are triggered when sufficient authority pages are present, otherwise it would default back to the base algorithm.
- Does not recommend worrying too much about image alt tags, although some search engines may treat alt text similarly to anchor text when it is on linked images.
Overall I thought Stomping the Search Engines was a pretty good product. If you are looking for in depth algorithmic reviews and citing researh papers then it's not the right product for you, but if you learn well from audio and can afford to splash out the cash Stomping the Search Engines would be a good product to get you acquainted with SEO.
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Good review - I agree with you about the audio format - it is difficult to update. But on the other hand so much of what's being discussed relates to lasting general principles that it doesn't really detract too much from the product.
Your "could be improved" section is very helpful.
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