Google SEO Tutorials

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation in 2017 is a technical, analytical and creative process to improve the visibility of a website in search engines. Its primary function is to drive more visits to a site that convert into sales. The free SEO tips you will read on this page will help you create a successful SEO friendly website yourself. I have over 15 years experience making websites rank in Google. If you need optimisation services – see my SEO audit or small business seo services.

An Introduction

This article is a beginner’s guide to effective white hat SEO.

I deliberately steer clear of techniques that might be ‘grey hat’, as what is grey today is often ‘black hat’ tomorrow, as far as Google is concerned. No one-page guide can explore this complex topic in full. What you’ll read here are answers to questions I had when I was starting out in this field.

The ‘Rules.’

Google insists webmasters adhere to their ‘rules’ and aims to reward sites with high-quality content and remarkable ‘white hat’ web marketing techniques with high rankings. Conversely, it also needs to penalise websites that manage to rank in Google by breaking these rules.

These rules are not ‘laws’, but ‘guidelines’, for ranking in Google; lay down by Google. You should note, however, that some methods of ranking in Google are, in fact, illegal. Hacking, for instance, is illegal in the UK and US.

You can choose to follow and abide by these rules, bend them or ignore them – all with different levels of success (and levels of retribution, from Google’s web spam team). White hats do it by the ‘rules’; black hats ignore the ‘rules’.

What you read in this article is perfectly within the laws and also within the guidelines and will help you increase the traffic to your website through organic, or natural search engine results pages (SERPs).

Definition

There are a lot of definitions of SEO (spelled Search engine optimisation in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, or search engine optimization in the United States and Canada) but organic SEO in 2017 is mostly about getting free traffic from Google, the most popular search engine in the world (and almost the only game in town in the UK):