Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day

Review by Jason L. Mcdonald for Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day
Rating:
I will try to be nice, and try to be diplomatic, and try to be brave hoping that Google doesn’t squelsh me into some dark corner of the Internet… David Szetela’s and Joseph Kirschbaum’s new book on Pay-per-click Marketing isn’t really that bad. It’s actually a generally thorough, easy-to-read, well organized book. (Advanced Google AdWords by Brad Geddes, however, is much, much the better book – more thorough, better organized, and more balanced).

But, as someone who teaches SEO and AdWords both online and in the real world, let me point out some huge warning signs on this book. First and foremost, the very cover of the book indicates it has a foreword by Google Evangelist Fred Vallaeys. So this book is all but Google endorsed. Is that a good thing? Well, remember, Google makes its money off of AdWords, and has an enormous conflict of interest here: Google promotes and endorses a group of PPC / AdWords cognoscenti who publicize AdWords as the world’s best and most powerful advertising medium, ever.

But remember with every click you make Google richer. The second warning sign – the first three pages of the book are endorsement after endorsement, again, by the insider club of AdWords guru’s. Almost every one of these makes money off of endorsing and encouraging people to use AdWords.

Third, the book doesn’t situate AdWords against the backdrop of the free things you can get from Google via SEO. It probably couldn’t do that, and retain its implicit blessing from the Vatican at Mountain View, a.k.a, the Google plex. In reality, however, you should do SEO – first – because it’s free, and then combine SEO with your AdWords.

I am all for AdWords – it IS a great platform and it CAN be a great way to advertise. But it just makes me angry that so many of the AdWords cognoscenti never point this out, and are so eager to be blessed by Google that they sell their souls to Google, and thereby lose their objectivity.

OK, rant over. Just be aware that this book should be read within the context of SEO (which I teach online – Google ‘Jason McDonald SEO’ to find me, or click on my profile). I also recommend a few other books on my Amazon profile, focused on SEO. If you read this book in companion with a good book on SEO (like Peter Kent’s) or in the context of a NON-GOOGLE sponsored class, it’s actually OK.

But, all things considered, Advanced Google AdWords by Brad Geddes is the better book. And, if we lived in a perfect world, the authors would more fully disclose their relationship with Google and the AdWords money-making machine. To be honest, any book that is endorsed by a Google evangelist should be just as suspect as a book on Microsoft Word that was endorsed by a Microsoft evangelist, or a GM car that was reviewed and endorsed by a GM evangelist. Somehow Google gets away with this hypocrisy, and I just do not know why.

All in all, AdWords can be great – but use it carefully, use it in combination with SEO, and remember that Google makes money on every click and can’t really be seen as an objective source of information on AdWords.