A Review of The Link Building Book by Paddy Moogan

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Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past week or so, you’ve doubtlessly heard that Paddy Moogan has written a book about Link Building 🙂

I read Paddy’s book this week and figured I write a review here.

I ought to say by way of a disclaimer that I do work with Paddy at Distilled, however this review is impartial – he’s not asked me to write this; nor have I received any kind of financial inducement to do so.

So, what do you get for your $37?

Over 65,000 words (or 287 pages) of Link Building goodness. The book includes sections on the following:

  • Link building basics
  • The history of link building
  • What you need to know about PageRank
  • The anatomy of a link – what makes a good (and bad) link
  • Planning and executing a link building campaign
  • How to scale link building safely
  • Penalties
  • Building a link building team
  • Outsourcing your link building
  • Making link building happen
  • Social signals and their effect on link building
  • The concept of AuthorRank
  • Link building techniques
  • Link building tools
  • Link building case studies
  • Link building resources
  • Blogs to follow for link building tips
  • People to follow on Twitter for link building
  • Google Webmaster Tools Videos on link building
  • SEO conferences that include link building sessions

Who is the book for?

Paddy says he deliberately wrote the book to cater for those agency-side, client-side and indeed website owners regardless of their level of experience.

I’d definitely concur that regardless of your level of experience there’s something there for you. I’d suggest that the book is particularly useful for people new to link building – I really wish there had been a book like this when I was starting out – I’ll definitely be putting it on the recommended reading list for new starters at Distilled. I’d also encourage agency-side SEOs to share it with their sales team, so that they too can gain a clearer understanding of what link building involves, and therefore, be better able to sell it to clients.

What I loved…

It’s far more than a book of link building tips, as the bullet pointed list of contents above nicely demonstrates. It’s jargon-free and really easy to navigate to the relevant sections. Obviously I read the whole book because I was reviewing it here; however if you didn’t want (or indeed need) to read the whole thing, you could very easily skip to the sections most relevant to you. Here’s how I’d break the book down:

Introductory (or conceptual) sections:

  • The basics of link building
  • The history of link building
  • What you need to know about PageRank
  • The anatomy of a link – what makes a good (and bad) link
  • Social signals and their effect on link building
  • The concept of AuthorRank

Process-focused sections:

  • Planning and executing a link building campaign from start to finish
  • Building a link building team
  • Making link building happen
  • Scaling link building
  • Link based penalties
  • Outsourcing your link building

Hands-on stuff:

Resources:

  • Link building tools
  • Link building case studies
  • Link building resources
  • Blogs to follow for link building tips
  • People to follow on Twitter for link building
  • Google Webmaster Tools Videos on link building
  • SEO conferences that include link building sessions

Aside from the chapters on link building techniques and tools,  the chapter I got the most out of was the case studies. Sharing real world experiences really isn’t something we do enough of as SEOs – I’d love to see this expanded even further in future editions.

I also really liked how Paddy has provided guidance (and indeed a framework) for determining what sort of links a site needs in addition to providing tips and techniques to actually go and get those links.

Finally, I really appreciate Paddy’s honesty, I think it’s best summed up by the quote below:

“You also need some patience, determination, and hustle in order to build good links. It really isn’t that hard to learn, but it is hard to do. Not because it is technically complicated, more because it doesn’t happen overnight and it can often be unpredictable.”

Grumbles

I’d love to see a Kindle version – in fairness, Paddy does say you can transfer the PDF to your Kindle manually, however I didn’t realise you could do that until after I’d read the book in it’s entirety. I’m guessing you’re much less stupid than me and knew that already. The PDF will work just fine on your tablet apparently, but I don’t have one of those because I’m a luddite.

Speaking of being a luddite I’d love it if hard copies were made available – remember real books, made of actual paper?

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This isn’t a personal grumble, however I can imagine that some people might be peeved that either there’s no ‘secret sauce’ or ‘silver bullet’ offered up in this book. If you were hoping for some kind of ‘magic’ way to build millions of links without any effort on your part then this isn’t the book for you.

If you’re looking for a solution like that send me $10,000 and I’ll fix you up*.

What are the scores, George Doors?

I’d have no hesitation in recommending this book. It’s really well-written, is a fantastic resource and well worth the cover price. As I said above I think it’s particularly suitable for those who are new to link building, but there’s something in this book for everyone.

You can get your very own copy of Paddy Moogan’s Link Building Book for $37.

Have you read Paddy’s book yet? What do you think? Do let me know via the comments.

*Don’t do this really. I will just take your money. Oh and laugh at you. A lot.