SEO Made Simple

Welcome to the “SEO Made Simple” Easy Search Engine Optimization Guide

This is a free and easy guide to the basics of search engine optimization, targeted at people who run websites and would like to get them to rank better in Google and other search engines. You might run a small business site, or be part of a larger company and tasked with the challenge of getting your company to “Number One In Google”. You might have a hobby site, a blog or a fansite that you’d like to get more traffic to, or you might sell products online and so traffic equals customers equals money in the bank. Whichever you are, you want more traffic, better targeted and without having to pay for it.

Traffic on its own is worth nothing if it not relevant to you. You want people who are going to arrive at your site and say "yes, that's what I was looking for" - and you don't want to pay for the privilege. In most areas of search, it's perfectly possible to get good results without paying a ton of money for paid advertising online. Paid advertising certainly has a valid place in the mix but you can save yourself a lot of money by getting your search engine optimization right.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

The terms Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Search Engine Marketing are freely bandied around the web these days. Thousands of companies exist to help you to rank better in Google and other search engines. SEO Made Simple is aimed at getting behind the long words and search engine jargon to provide you with simple and easy rules to follow to improve the search engine ranking of your site. Almost every site can benefit from a few simple changes that even the internet novice can implement.

Search Engine Optimization is about getting your site to rank better in search engines in their free listings. Search Engine Marketing focuses more on the paid advertising side and broader issues of how you integrate your online marketing with getting visitors to convert to paying customers once they've arrived.

“Tell the Search Engine What the Site is About”

At an advanced level, search engine optimization is a complex business, testing the search engines and keeping track of their frequent algorithm updates. However, for most people’s purposes, search engine optimization is an easy process of understanding the basic principle of how a search engine works, and then making their site fit some simple rules. Not everyone wants to spend thousands on paying SEO experts, or indeed has the money to consider doing so. This site will give you some easy lessons on the basic elements of search engine optimization. If you follow them all through then you should expect to see a significant improvement in your ranking if your site had not been optimized before.

What "SEO Made Simple" offers

Simply stated, we are providing a series of easy, basic articles, each one tackling a different area of search engine optimization. Reading and understanding each article takes you closer to a broad understanding of the principles of SEO. Everything you can do to improve your site from a search engine perspective will help you get the targeted traffic you are after. There's always more you can do and we don't aim to cover everything - we're focusing on some bite-sized morsels to get you started. On the "Find out more" page, you'll find some links to other sites where you can go to the next level.

What to expect in terms of results

Search engines update their rankings periodically so you will be unlikely to see results immediately. It usually takes between a couple of weeks and a couple of months for you to start to see improvements in your rankings. As you start to see your site climb the rankings, you should revisit the lessons and see whether you can make further improvements.

Who are we?

The team behind SEO Made Simple are not your typical search engine consultants – eating, drinking and sleeping javascript, SQL, black hat, white hat and other complex terminology that the rest of the world doesn’t understand or much care about.

Rather, we like to break down problems into simple issues and find clear solutions that ordinary people can implement themselves. During the day, the SEO Made Simple team operate as business consultants, doing this in the real world. On the internet, the need for clear and simple solutions is just as acute and we believe that SEO Made Simple is one of a kind.

We have been playing with websites, search and search engine optimization since mid-2000, when the search engine optimization industry was in its infancy. We worked with small business sites, content sites, ecommerce sites and informational sites, achieving significant results with each. Over time, it has become clear that the core principles we advocated at the beginning have remained the core of search engine optimization and therefore we are now confident enough to advocate this approach as a formal Search Engine Optimization Programme. We hope you find it useful and achieve your goals.