1. The review must tell what the book is about.
2. The review must tell what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.
3. The review must tell what the reviewer thinks about what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.

If this template is not actually Aristotelian, it has that philosopher’s breathtaking plainness and penetration. To sneer at it as obvious would be a mistake. Even the clunky or stammering expression of the three rules (“what the reviewer thinks about what the author says about that thing the book is about”) works as a hammer, driving home the essential principles and their distinctly separate, yet profoundly interrelated nature.

Applying the three-part standard to every book review I read, I find that many—or most?—fill only one or two of the requirements. Sometimes a reviewer dutifully paraphrases a book, fulfilling Rule One with a stab at Two, but seems too shy or fearful for Three. Another kind of writer, eager to show off, proceeds directly to Rule Three with a perfunctory glance at One and nothing about Two. Only a few reviewers do their work well enough to provide all three kinds of information, and a certain number—disciples of John Wilson Croker—avoid all three.

It’s interesting to check out review sites and reviewers and see who’s following the rules.  The quality ones do, but sometimes the more entertaining ones don’t.

LINK

Keywords are related to what people type into search boxes. Google is the King of the Search Box, but there are others.
Why finding your right keywords is important

You want your web site to come up on the top of those Google pages when people are typing their words into the Almighty Search Box. Then people will click and visit your site. They have to visit your site before they can buy your products or invest in whatever you’re offering.

There’s also another good reason for figuring out keywords. It really helps you to focus on the purpose of your site.

To be effective these search phrases have to be wound into the framework, the skin, and bones of your site. Your targeted keywords have to be in the titles of your posts and the texts. They have to be the heart of your site. Google will index them and when searchers put in that phase your site will come up on the first page. That really matters. How often to you click on page ten or so when you’re searching for something. You go to the results on the first page

* You want the phrases relevant to your site content.
* You want phrases people are actually using in searches.

There’s no point in competing with sites that already have hundreds of thousands of visitors and millions of dollars they are flinging toward online advertising (see the Google ad below the post? That company paid big time for the privilege).

Big companies pay millions of dollars to SEO consultants to research and find just the right keywords and use them correctly on their sites. They pay millions more to Google and other search engine companies for their ad campaigns. All the easy and popular search terms are gobbled up by folks with Money and lots of it.

What’s left for the rest of us?

Stuff that people are searching for, but stuff that the big companies haven’t bothered to eat up yet. Example: When I do a Google search for urban fantasy novels, there are 748,000 competing web pages. But if I do a google search for BBW urban fantasy novels (BBW stands for Big Beautiful Woman), I get 11,200 web pages–much more doable if I want to get traffic to my site about BBW urban fantasy fiction.

You need to break down what you’re offering to a smaller, targeted niche. Throwing out a keyword for Romance is pretty much a waste of time, given the competition, but if your romance features Kitty Cats or Alcoholic Heroines, you should target specific keywords for that. The sweet spot for sure traffic for your smart SEO efforts? Less than 30K web pages and the top site for that search gets at least 75-100 visitors a day. As long as there are less than half a million web pages, you have a prayer, but given the competition, you need to be really on your game. If you’re selling something rather than just getting the word out, you want to make sure there are lots of paid ads present at the top and on the sidebar in the Google result pages.

How to research keywords

Google Adwords have some nifty tools where you put in a keyword and get related ideas. I think Google has the best free tools because they want you to pay them to drive traffic based on your chosen keywords.

Once you get some phrases you think are relevant to your site, search Google and see how many web pages come up in your search (less than 150K is workable, less than 30K means targeted traffic). Check out Quantcast, Compete, Google Trends, and Alexa for how much traffic your top competitors are getting (at least 75-100 hits a day, more is better).
(WritersRooms Premium users get links to keyword research and optimization tools right in their admin areas).

To learn SEO online, I recommend SEOBook which is high quality, but they charge $300 a month! SEOMoz is also pretty good, but doesn’t have the learning resources SEOBook has–is $99 a month. That’s about the minimum for quality SEO that doesn’t waste your money.

But here’s what you need to know:

You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the of your site and the pages on your site. You need to make that content fresh and of value to visitors.

1) Continually add fresh high quality content related to your search engine phrases.  Frequency isn’t as important as regularity.

2) Find your best keywords or key phrases

3) Use them! Use them in the title, in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the
page, in bold or italics, in text links, and perhaps in a list on the page. Also, use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.

4) Create a logical navigation system and site map so that humans and search
engines can easily find the content on your site.

5) List your site with Google Webmaster and Google Places if applicable.

This will not result in an overnight explosion of traffic. Be consistent, be persistent, keep adding quality keyword related content and as time passes, you will get where you want to be, and that’s before most of the rest of the bunch, who don’t have a clue.