Anyone that has built their own website will know all too well how hard it can be to get noticed amongst the millions of other sites out there. With Google now being by far the most popular search engine, most people will need to concentrate on getting their site as Google friendly as possible - most of the others will be helped too by the simple things that can be done.

Things aren't helped, especially when starting out on this task, by the mystique built up around Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short. With firms charging quite serious money and making wild claims such as a guarantee for being in the top ten (and then telling that to 20 clients...) it is all to easy to think it's an impossible task to do on your own - it's not. This book could be just what you're after if you want to improve your site's search rankings.

Getting Noticed on Google is another in the 'in easy steps' series and as such is printed on nice brilliant white pages with lots of illustrations and colour and comes at you in punchy nugget sized sections. However, it still manages to include a lot of useful stuff that anyone can do to up their visibility online.

Product	Getting Noticed on Goofle (in Easy Steps)
From	Computer Step
	Well paced, easy to follow tips
	A bit too thin on resources

Next up is a look at some simple tools such as Google's own toolbar, Google Analytics and Web CEO, a free program for analysing and suggesting changes. Web CEO turns up throughout the book so is well worth getting hold of.

After that the book takes you through the fundamentals of each task you need to perform in order to improve your site's attractiveness to Google. Coverage here includes keywords, competitor analysis (not as bad as it sounds) and good page structure such as using HTML's tags properly to add semantic meaning to your content as well as alt-tags on images, properly considered titles and so on. It's obviously going to be somewhat easier to do a lot of this as you build your site rather than retrofitting it so bear that in mind.

Having got your site right, it's then time to do the "other stuff" and here the book provides guidance on submitting to Google (don't forget that bit!), creating sitemaps which Google also likes and probably the most important aspect, getting incoming links. Whilst internal links are important, the book emphasises getting the tags right, especially on incoming links which are probably the most important thing in boosting your site's ranking. You want a link to say "guidance on XP security" rather than "saw a great article here" so Google can ascertain what the link is for. As part of this task, you'll also need to submit to as many directories as possible and also try to get includes on other sites as part of a link exchange. The latter is often rather demoralising though as not that many enquiries produce a result in our experience.

It's all very well getting things tuned without knowing how successful you are so the book then moves on to tracking and analysing your results via web statistics programs and in particular Google Analytics, a free tool for tracking your website. It also covers using Google ads to promote your site but unless you selling something, this is probably not a cost effective idea. Finally, Froogle gets a look in - again useful if you have a product to sell.

The book finishes off with what an SEO specialist might be able to add, where to get further help and usefully, some notes on Google's sandbox which may catch you out if you don't know about it.

We liked this book. it's an easy read, gets all the important stuff neatly covered and sets expectations on what can be done and how quickly. We also thought concentrating on a few key tools was a sensible move and the author manages to get good use out of them throughout. On top of that, the whole book has a good balance and manages to avoid being either too cursory or getting too bogged down in extraneous detail. We did feel we'd have liked more resources being detailed - especially good directories to use and other useful sites on the subject. To be fair, the author Ben Norman does say he's only listed the stuff he's found works well so it's a small grumble. We also applaud the fact the book sticks rigorously to "White Hat" techniques and avoids any of the more dubious practices that can work in the short term but cause problems further down the line. That apart, it's a great book for anyone wanting to get their website on Google's radar without spending a fortune on snake oil or doing anything other than what any well built site should anyway.