It seems to be quite commonly believed that search engines are anti-SEO and hold those that call them selves SEO’s in comtempt. While I would agree that search engines hate spammy, low quality websites and attempts to manipulate search engine rankings using nefarious methods – I would argue that search engines actually value websites that are optimised for the right reasons, in accordance with their guide lines.

Why? Because it makes it easier for them to categorise and value websites.

It’s quite easy to see this is true, and just as easy to learn how to stay on their good side when Google has gone to the lengths of producing an official SEO guide, as well as many videos and blog posts over the years.

There are hundreds of ranking factors, but very broadly, here are some major factors that I believe Google, and other search engines love and hate. Read More

Welcome to the final installment of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. This episode will focus on measuring your progress, how to gain insight from your stats, and acting on those insights.

By now you should know that search engine optimisation is an iterative process, part of that process includes reviewing the success of your past action to plan future action. To see exactly what impact search engine optimisation has on your site, you need to measure certain data on a regular basis. There are three main areas to measure month after month to keep you on the right track. They are:

Web Analytics: who visited your site, where did they come from and what did they do?
Search Engine Rankings: are you gaining or losing ground for important keywords in the search engine results pages?
Links: is your link profile growing? Where are your links coming from? Are your link building efforts successful?

Contents
Web Analytics
Search Engine Referrals
Keywords
Top Landing Pages
Map Overlay
Tracking Search Engine Rankings
Links
Read More

Welcome to Part 4 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. In this guide we’ll cover how links improve search engine rankings, what qualities make a great link and how to get them.

Contents
Link Building Theory
Why Are Links Important?
Page Rank
No Follow / Do Follow
What Defines a Quality Link?
Link Building Practice
How Many Links Do I Have & Who Links To Me?
Link Building Tips
Where Can I Find New Links?

Search engines place a lot of weight when ranking websites on their incoming link profile – the links that point to your site. You can build a website full of great content, but without some link love you may never receive a visitor from a search engine.

Why Are Links Important?
Link building has been an important part of search engine optimisation since Google introduced a link analysis algorithm as a major factor in ranking pages. Much has evolved in the algorithm and there are reportedly around 200 factors that Google considers when ranking a page, but it is well know that links are still a heavily weighted factor.
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Welcome to Part 3 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. In this guide we’ll use the keyword research conducted previously to optimise the pages of your website.

In the final stages of the keyword research exercise you mapped keywords to the relevant pages of your site. Now we’ll go over where and how to optimise the pages of your site for it’s keywords.

Contents
On-Page Factors
Page Titles
Description Meta Tag
Keywords Meta Tag
Headings
Content
Image Alt Tags
An Illustrated Example
Site-Wide Factors
Menu & Navigation Links
Consistent Linking
Sitemaps

You’ll need to be able to edit the code of your web pages. If your website is built with a content management system you will need to login to your CMS, hopefully there will be an option to edit the source code – or at the least edit the title tags, copy and image properties.
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All Keywords Are Not Created Equal

Welcome to Part 2 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. We’ll discover the keywords that you’ll want to rank well for in the search engines and we’ll be using these keywords to optimise your web site in Part 3: Website Optimisation.

Contents
Keyword Discovery
Keyword Research Tools
Culling the List
Keyword Relevance
Assessing Competition
Grouping and Mapping Keywords

The value of keyword research must not be underestimated. If you optimise your site for just the keywords that are obvious to you, without research, you are setting yourself up for failure. Ranking well for multiple, commonly used keywords in your market can bring your site a huge amount of targeted traffic. For every product or service there are potentially thousands of distinct keyword combinations that a user may enter in a search engine. The more variations of common keywords your pages rank for on the first page of search results, the more traffic you will receive.
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Website Appraisal – Is your foundation SEO Friendly?

Welcome to Part 1 of the free do-it-yourself SEO Guide. We’ll start by taking a look over your site and flagging some issues that may have a negative affect on your efforts. We’ll be looking for common issues that can potentially adversely affect search engine rankings. Some of these are technical issues, some are web design issues and others are things you may have done based on bad advice.

Contents
Splash Pages
Frames
Flash
URL Structure
Content
Search Engine Terms
Black Hat SEO and Spam
Benchmark: Pages Indexed
Read More

Every website can benefit from search engine optimisation. Want targeted traffic from the search engines? Of course you do, if you’re not getting that search engine traffic, your competitors are. However, not every business can afford to hire an SEO firm to do the work them.

To this end I am writing a free do-it-yourself SEO guide, specifically for small business and individuals. I’ll walk you through how to conduct in depth keyword research, discovering the best keywords for your product/service/offer. How to optimise your site to rank for those keywords – to get free, targeted traffic from Google, Yahoo and MSN/Bing. And I’ll show you how to build powerful, relevant incoming links to your website to outrank your competitors.

I’ll keep it simple and straight forward, while including everything you need to succeed. Best of all, I’ll show you how to do it without spending a cent, using free tools and expert knowledge.

DIY SEO Guide
Part 1: Website Appraisal
Part 2: Keyword Research
Part 3: Website Optimisation
Part 4: Link Building
Part 5: Measuring Progress

Lately it has become more common for people I meet, especially business people, to have at least a broad understanding of what SEO is – even compared to just a year or two ago. I find I no longer have to explain exactly what it is I do, but I usually have to expand their understanding.

So what is Search Engine Optimisation and how has it evolved?

Traditionally SEO included optimising your websites code, content, architecture and building links to it. That was about it. But things change.

The reality is that today, professionals employed as SEO consultants do a lot more than this. In fact most aspects of traditional marketing, applied online, should be considered part and parcel of any search engine optimisation (read web marketing) plan.
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