Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth: Review of "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Growing Your Business With Google"

Monday, October 02, 2006

Review of "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Growing Your Business With Google"

Dave Taylor's book The Complete Idiot's Guide To Growing Your Business with Google has a very clever title.

If you checked the searches made for the keyword "Google" on the 2nd October 2006 you'd have found 17,651,063 searches. That compares to 4,503,871 for the keyword "Yahoo".

As Dave Taylor says in this book it's all about visibility on the web. As he points out "companies with high visibility invariably are more successful...".

Using Google as a keyword in his book title makes him several times more visible on searches compared to people searching with Yahoo as a keyword.

Dave doesn't assume a level of knowledge with his book and starts every reader off with the basics. Firstly he challenges the reader to check their current Internet strategy.

Then he moves on to offer the reasons why you shouldn't be trying to get more and more traffic. Instead you should be aiming to get more and more customers.

He points out there are some businesses that, contrary to popular thought, are just not cut out for the Internet.

Throughout this thoughtful book Dave encourages you to take action and even has a section called "The Least You Need to Know" where he highlights the key messages and actions you need to take from a chapter.

True to his word Dave talks about all the different aspects of Google, including Google Labs, Froogle and Blogger.

Helpfully he explains exactly how to conduct a useful basic search for something using Google. Then he goes into the slightly more complex multiple term searching and the notation you can use for quite specific searches.

And of course these approaches work equally as well with other search engines.

Part way through the book he asks "What's Your Core Business". A question that has stopped many an entrepreneur in their tracks. He then helps you understand that an Internet business, or a business that is online and offline require the same approach. That is asking who your customers are and the need to focus on core values, knowing your competitors and setting measurable goals.

Afterwards he dives into ways of getting good content for your web site, checking your competitors web sites, how to use Google Alerts and using forums, blogs and bulletin boards to educate yourself on your own business and your competitors.

The book advises on ways of building a better, more visible site by explaining the key elements of a web site, using the Internet to "stretch" your marketing dollars and discussing a few of the secrets of the online masters.

He also explains the "dark side" of the search engine optimisation methods or the "black hat" techniques that would get you banned from Google if they were discovered. And some high profile names were discovered and banned for using these techniques.

And of course he explains about how to advertise your wares with Google Adwords and how to make money from other companies adverts using Google Adsense.

Overall this is a well-written book that provides enough information for business newbies to get started on the right track. It also helps those people who have a web site but are currently leaving money on the table because they're not as visible as they should be.

Internet marketing aces will know most of what Dave describes but they too would benefit from reading it because you can bet that just like me they'll still learn a thing or two.