SEO books for bloggers: required reading

If you're serious about blogging, you also have to be serious about search engine optimization.

True, you can hire someone like me to do your basic SEO set-up work, but SEO is a process and you'll have to apply its golden rules day in, day out. Things like knowing how to word anchor links (never ever a "click here!") and how to do alt tags on images.

So, I make the case that blogging and SEO are strongly linked for anyone seeking to become a successful online writer.

There are some good SEO basics books (and some not-so-good SEO books). Here are two I recommend:

Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, Second Edition by Peter Kent. Yes, I'm serious. Good book. OK for intermediates as well as beginners.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford. Easy to follow. For beginners.

I'll also point to a good book on xhtml (html) and CSS (cascading style sheets), because it helps to speak the language (er, code):

HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition by Elizabeth Castro. Easy to understand, but far from dumbed down. If I needed to learn something complicated, I'd want Castro explaining it to me.

Books are, of course, old media, nasty as that sounds. If you want to keep up with SEO (a fast-moving serpentine target) and the latest tricks of the trade from "pro bloggers," you'll be using new media.

The next post on Write for Blogs will cover my top 10 SEO/blogger newsletters -- the ones I read whenever they hit my mailbox. Call it continuing education. School's out, for now.