Summer Reading List: The Top 9 SEO Books to Skyrocket Your Website’s Success
Unlock vital summer SEO insights with our top 9 recommended SEO books to skyrocket your website's visibility and rankings.
SEO always comes first.
Actually, 76% of your digital marketing success depends on this three-letter abbreviation.
That and many other crucial facts from the realm of search engine optimization are waiting for you in the below books about SEO.
Dive into the deepest waters of SEO safely with these top picks. Unveil the power of SEO and discover the hidden secrets of growing website conversions with the tried-and-tested strategies from these books.
The Best Books on SEO for a Higher Website Ranking
Learn how to rank #1 in Google or any other search engine with these must-reads recommended by business leaders and managers who marked them with a green tick 
on their 2023 summer reading lists.
SEO Book #1. SEO Like I’m 5
Author: Matthew Capala
Key takeaways
Invisibility is a fate worth more than failure…
That’s the key principle you learn from one of the top books about SEO to read this summer.
Matthew Capala takes you from invisibility to invincibility by applying the five Cs of SEO success to your website strategy:
- Content – is … King, right you’re! And so is SEO content optimization for your web pages.
- Code – title tag optimization, meta descriptions, etc.
- Credibility – link prospecting and finding trustful sources for backlinks.
- Connections – collaboration with influencers and bloggers.
- Cash – website monetization models.
You’ve also got a bonus C – Commando.
What’s that?
No spoilers here. Read the book and discover it yourself.
Who has read it already this summer?
SEO Like I’m 5 is a must-read for total virgins or complete noobs in search engine optimization. It explains everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly of this process.
While reading this book, I immediately drew an analogy between angling and SEO. If you don’t boast about your fish, how can others know you’re an angler? The same with SEO: if you don’t know how to boast about your website and your business on the search engines, how can your target audience know you exist at all?
Coty Perry, CMO at Anglers:
SEO Book #2. SEO and Copywriting
Author: Philip Hayes
Key takeaways
Breaking onto the first page of SERP results and soaking in the sunrays of the website’s success.
Most likely, that’s what you’re dreaming of. Just like every other website owner.
But how to achieve it?
That’s when you can turn to this happily married couple of copywriting and SEO to help you do that. By following the tips from this book for SEO, you can easily optimize your existing content and build a new content model with an emphasis on powerful copies.
Who has read it already this summer?
As a content manager and copywriter, I found this book incredibly useful for my SEO endeavors. It reveals the fundamental SEO copywriting things you should know if you want your website content to rank higher in Google. From keyword research to headlines and texts well-stuffed with relevant and targeted keywords.
Jesse Hanson, Content Manager at Online Solitaire & World of Card Games
SEO Book #3. SEO in 2023
Author: David Bain
Key takeaways
What to expect from search engine optimization in 2023 and beyond? How to prepare and what tactics to prioritize?
Find the answers and effective SEO strategies from 101 experts on 511 pages of the printed book copy.
Just to name a few pieces of advice explained more thoroughly in this book by the SEO gurus who shared them:
- Do regular website monitoring – Rebecca Berbel
- Focus on technical optimization – Andy Drinkwater
- Go beyond traditional blue links – Cindy Krum
- E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is still a big deal, so follow these guidelines – Izabela Wisniewska
Besides, you’ll explore the top SEO trends you should be watching out for in 2023.
Who has read it already this summer?
My top pick for this list would be SEO in 2023. It’s one of the newest and greatest SEO books for a 2023 read.One of its chapters covers link building in particular and spells out why it hasn’t died yet. And most probably, it won’t disappear from our radars in the nearest future. If you still have some time after this book, I’d also recommend reading Link Building Is Dead. Long Live Link Building! by Sage Lewis.
Priyam Chawla, Marketing Manager at Jolly SEO
SEO Book #4. The No B.S. Guide To Shopify SEO
Author: Andrea M. Fuller
Key takeaways
In that case, this SEO guide is definitely for you.
The dreaded 404 page won’t be so dreaded anymore after you read it.
Moreover, you’ll learn how to boost your SEO efforts by using schema markup. Andrea Fuller, an SEO professional plowing this field for 20 years, also guides you on how to improve your Shopify website and maximize its effectiveness with other incredibly practical SEO techniques by your side.
Who has read it already this summer?
Undeniably, The No B.S. Guide To Shopify SEO should be among your to-be-read books about search engine optimization if you run a Shopify store.
In roughly 100 pages, you grasp the importance of checking the core vitals of your site, using the Shopify CDN for better website performance, finding good keywords, and more.
Importantly, after reading this book, we could do updates on our website without hiring a developer and implement speedier solutions for getting more sales of DTF transfers.
Tom Golubovich, Head of Marketing & Media Relations at Ninja Transfers
SEO Book #5. The SEO Manifesto
Authors: Pamela Gobiel and Dan Tousignant
Key takeaways
Traffic, traffic, traffic…
No matter what kind of traffic is in your mind’s eye, if your main motive is to boost your organic traffic or your paid traffic ethically, this SEO manifesto perfectly matches this intention.
Relying on this book, it’s necessary to go through eight phases:
- Preparation
- Launch
- Optimization
- Submission
- Networking
- Advertising (organic and pay-per-click, aka PPC)
- Tracking
- Maintenance
The authors also filled this guide with checklists, resources, and tools. They make the process of optimizing your website for search engines a breeze for you.
Who has read it already this summer?
My reading list this year includes The SEO Manifesto – one of the best SEO books ever if you ask me. It’s virtually a primer for small business owners who want to promote their websites on the web effectively.
The book majorly focuses on the ethics of generating leads and attracting customers to your site and walks you through all the stages of business development with SEO in mind.
Michael Maximoff, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Belkins
SEO Book #6. Local SEO Secrets
Author: Roger Bryan
Key takeaways
Want an SEO secret to rank locally in Google?
In this book, you’ll get over a dozen of those.
No rush. First, you should know the basics.
And here they go.
Data and localized content are two driving forces for effective local SEO. Alongside, Roger Bryan gives the breakdown of target KPIs:
- Average rank
- Visibility score
- Impressions
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Pageviews
- Time on site
- Bounce rate
- Users
- Conversion rate
- Total number of conversions
As for the secrets, just to mention a few: you’ll learn the hacks on how to optimize for localized Google voice search or how to use schema markup for local SEO, for instance.
Who has read it already this summer?
The man who started his SEO career in the late 90s, worked with one of the largest healthcare providers in the industry, and increased its organic traffic by 400% on average, became my local SEO coach via this book.
What I particularly consider useful from his guide are the strategic approaches for multi-location optimization as, at NuggMD, we target customers from different US states.
There’s one more thing I’d like to emphasize about it. The author also deciphers the essential terms in the glossary so that you don’t get lost in the darkest woods of search engine optimization.
Alex Milligan, Co-founder & CMO of NuggMD
SEO Book #7. Step-By-Step Guide for AI-Powered Advanced SEO Secrets Finally Revealed!
Author: Tuhin Banik
Key takeaways
On his book’s porch, Tuhin Banik meets you with the statistics. Roughly 81% of industries are investing in artificial intelligence today.
AI has already made drastic changes in digital marketing. It didn’t leave website optimization for search engines untouched either. Businesses witnessed the advent of semantic SEO driven by artificial intelligence. They also started using advanced SEO strategies with NLP and other AI-based algorithms and technologies.
Yup, the future of SEO will be fascinating with AI. And with this book, you’ll be able to keep up with it to stay ahead of the digital game.
Who has read it already this summer?
If you are looking for books on advanced SEO, you cannot miss out on this one. It teaches you how to improve your website’s organic performance with AI-based SEO tools and proven data-driven strategies. It is a stepwise guide with possible website issues and recommendations on how to fix those.
I should warn you, though: it is a heavily technical book and may not be suitable for beginners in search engine optimization.
Fernando Lopez, Marketing Director at Circuit
SEO Book #8. The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business
Author: Jason Barnard
Key takeaways
Do you know the exact number of people who have googled your brand name?
If you still have no idea about it, brand SERP can shed enough light for you to understand your digital ecosystem in Google.
While the author, known as The Brand SERP Guy, is going to explain why you need it in the first place and give you the essentials on how to approach it in his book. He’s been in the field for ten years already tracking and analyzing different types of brand SERPs.
Jason Barnard won’t allow you to leave your brand SERP to chance. He will teach you how to manage and optimize the following for effective SEO:
- Your homepage
- Rich snippets and sitelinks
- Social media
- Google Knowledge Panels
- Google Ads, and more
Who has read it already this summer?
I couldn’t wait to read this book since the moment it landed on my reading list right upon its publication. And what can I say?
Jason Barnard, a pioneer of brand SERP optimization, can’t but amaze you with his in-depth research and insight on all aspects of building a strong brand position and yet easy-to-follow instructions you can apply straight away.
He shares super-important tips for any business, either at the very start of the journey or already in the middle of it. There are so many little nuances and tiny things in brand SERP you’d never think of. Jason Barnard is the person who will challenge your view on online brand management and ultimately expand your SEO horizon with this book. Trust me.
Andrea Volpini, CEO & Co-Founder of WordLift
SEO Book #9. SEMANTIC SEO: The Semantic-aware SEO workflow
Author: Alexander Rodrigues Silva
Key Takeaways
This book was born from the author’s desire to document his experience in search engine optimization and the insights he gained while studying librarianship at the University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Taxonomies, ontologies, and SEO are three elements born to coexist. But before delving into the beautiful world of semantic SEO, you need to know more about what website optimization was like before using semantics, and this book will help you do that.
The process described in this book, the semantic SEO workflow, increases the relevance of published content by providing metadata that generates meaning and semantically links data. This process helps resolve ambiguities when answering a query with a specific search intent.