A simple definition of search engine optimization in 2015 is that it is a technical and creative process to improve the visibility of a website in search engines, with the aim of driving more potential customers to it. These free seo tips will help you create a successful seo friendly website yourself, based on my 15 years experience making websites rank in Google. If you need optimization service
s – see my seo audit. An Introduction
This 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 is how I approach the basics – and these are the basics – as far as I remember them. At least – these are answers to questions I had when I was starting out in this field. And things have changed since I started this company in 2006. 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 penalize web sites that manage to rank in Google by breaking these rules. These rules are not laws, only guidelines, for ranking in Google; laid down by Google. You should note that some methods of ranking in Google are, in fact, actually illegal. 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 within the guidelines and will help you increase the traffic to your website through organic, or natural search engine results pages (SERPS). While there are a lot of definitions of SEO (spelled Search engine optimization in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, or search engine optimization in the United States and Canada) organic SEO in 2015 is mostly about getting free traffic from Google, the most popular search engine in the world (and the only game in town in the UK):
The guide you are reading is for the more technical minded. Opportunity
The art of web seo is understanding how people search for things, and understanding what type of results Google wants to (or will) display to it’s users. It’s about putting a lot of things together to look for opportunity. A good optimizer has an understanding of how search engines like Google generate their natural SERPS to satisfy users’ NAVIGATIONAL, INFORMATIONAL and TRANSACTIONAL keyword queries. A good search engine marketer has a good understanding of the short term and long term risks involved in optimizing rankings in search engines, and an understanding of the type of content and sites Google (especially) WANTS to return in it’s natural SERPS. The aim of any campaign is increased visibility in search engines. There are rules to be followed or ignored, risks to be taken, gains to be made, and battles to be won or lost. A Mountain View spokesman once called the search engine ‘kingmakers‘, and that’s no lie. Ranking high in Google is VERY VALUABLE – it’s effectively ‘free advertising’ on the best advertising space in the world. Traffic from Google natural listings is STILL the most valuable organic traffic to a website in the world, and it can make or break an online business. The state of play STILL is that you can generate your own highly targeted leads, for FREE, just by improving your website and optimizing your content to be as relevant as possible for a customer looking for your company, product or service. As you can imagine, there’s a LOT of competition now for that free traffic – even from Google (!) in some niches. The Process
The process can successfully practiced in a bedroom or a workplace, but it has traditionally involved mastering many skills as they arose including diverse marketing technologies including but not limited to:
• website design
• accessibility
• usability
• user experience
• website development
• php, html, css etc
• server management
• domain management
• copywriting
• spreadsheets
• back link analysis
• keyword research
• social media promotion
• software development
• analytics and data analysis
• information architecture
• looking at Google for hours on end
It takes a lot, in 2015, to rank on merit a page in Google in competitive niches, and the stick Google is hitting every webmaster with (at the moment, and for the foreseeable future) is the ‘QUALITY USER EXPERIENCE‘ stick. If you expect to rank in Google in 2015, you’d better have a quality offering, not based entirely on manipulation, or old school tactics. Is a visit to your site a good user experience? If not – beware MANUAL QUALITY RATERS and BEWARE the GOOGLE PANDA algorithm which is looking for signs of poor user experience and low quality content. Google raising the ‘quality bar’ ensures a higher level of quality in online marketing in general (above the very low quality we’ve seen over the last years). Success online involves HEAVY INVESTMENT in on page content, website architecture, usability, conversion to optimization balance, and promotion. If you don’t take that route, you’ll find yourself chased down by Google’s algorithms at some point in the coming year. This ‘what is seo’ guide (and this entire website) is not about churn and burn type of Google seo (called web spam to Google). What Is A Successful Strategy? Get relevant. Get trusted. Get Popular. It’s is no longer just about manipulation. It’s about adding quality and often utilitarian content to your website which meet a PURPOSE that delivers USER SATISFACTION. If you are serious about getting more free traffic from search engines, get ready to invest time and effort into your website and online marketing. Google wants to rank QUALITY documents in its results, and force those who want to rank high to invest in great content, or great service, that attracts editorial links from other reputable websites. If you’re willing to add a lot of great content to your website, and create buzz about your company, Google will rank you high. If you try to manipulate Google, it will penalise you for a period of time, and often until you fix the offending issue – which we know can LAST YEARS. Backlines in general, for instance, are STILL weighed FAR too positively by Google and they are manipulated to drive a site to the top positions – for a while. That’s why black hats do it – and they have the business model to do it. It’s the easiest way to rank a site, still today. If you are a real business who intends to build a brand online – you can’t use black hat methods. Full stop. Google Rankings Are In Constant Ever-Flux
It’s Google’s job to MAKE MANIPULATING SERPS HARD. So – the people behind the algorithms keeps ‘moving the goalposts’, modifying the ‘rules’ and raising ‘quality standards’ for pages that compete for top ten rankings. In 2015 – we have ever-flux in the SERPS – and that seems to suit Google and keep everybody guessing. Google is very secretive about its ‘secret sauce’ and offers sometimes helpful and sometimes vague advice – and some say offers misdirection – about how to get more from valuable traffic from Google. Google is on record as saying the engine is intent on ‘frustrating’ search engine optimizers attempts to improve the amount of high quality traffic to a website – at least (but not limited to) – using low quality strategies classed as web spam. At its core, Google search engine optimization is about KEYWORDS and LINKS. It’s about RELEVANCE, REPUTATION and TRUST. It is about QUALITY OF CONTENT & VISITOR SATISFACTION. A Good USER EXPERIENCE is the end goal. Relevance, Authority & Trust
Web page optimization is about making a web page being relevant enough for a query, and being trusted enough to rank for it. It’s about ranking for valuable keywords for the long term, on merit. You can play by ‘white hat’ rules laid down by Google, or you can choose to ignore those and go ‘black hat’ – a ‘spammer’. MOST seo tactics still work, for some time, on some level, depending on who’s doing them, and how the campaign is deployed. Whichever route you take, know that if Google catches you trying to modify your rank using overtly obvious and manipulative methods, then they will class you a web spammer, and your site will be penalized (normally you will not rank high for important keywords). These penalties can last years if not addressed, as some penalties expire and some do not – and Google wants you to clean up any violations. Google does not want you to try and modify your rank. Critics would say Google would prefer you paid them to do that using Google Adwords. The problem for Google is – ranking high in Google organic listings is a real social proof for a business, a way to avoid ppc costs and still, simply, the BEST WAY to drive REALLY VALUABLE traffic to a site. It’s FREE, too, once you’ve met the always-increasing criteria it takes to rank top. In 2015, you need to be aware that what works to improve your rank can also get you penalised (faster, and a lot more noticeably). In particular, the Google web spam team is currently waging a pr war on sites that rely on unnatural links and other ‘manipulative’ tactics (and handing out severe penalties if it detects them) – and that’s on top of many algorithms already designed to look for other manipulative tactics (like keyword stuffing). Google is making sure it takes longer to see results from black and white hat seo, and intent on ensuring a flux in it’s SERPS based largely on where the searcher is in the world at the time of the search, and where the business is located near to that searcher.
