Google SEO – A Search Engine Optimization Tutorial

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***Jan 2012 – Please note – Our SEO Tutorial is offline while we update it for 2012 – see DIY SEO for now.***

Over 70,000 people have visited the Hobo seo company in the last 30 days looking to learn SEO and we have over 18000 readers (at the time of writing) subscribed to our newsletter. We hope you find our Free SEO tutorial useful.

Introduction - Search engine optimization is many things, it’s an art and it’s a a science. SEO is creative and it’s technical. It’s logical, parasitic and opportunistic. The aim of seo is to maximise targeted types of valuable traffic to a website from search engines by improving the visibility of said website in Google organic or unpaid SERPS. Traditionally, this has meant aiming for no1, or top ten positions in Google but SEO has evolved and now a SEO needs to be more a marketer than just a tech geek. A seo needs to be concerned, not just with high positions in Google for relevant keywords, but with analysing competition, traffic and analytics, and converting traffic to leads and sales. I like to draw a line between SEO and Linkbuilding. One (SEO) is on-page (on-site), the other, off-site (Linkbuilding).

SEO is not gaming Google (for this seo company anyway). It’s about trying to understand how and why Google engineers want to rank pages above others. SEO is about optimising a site to give Google what it wants, and at the same time, meeting the requirements, the intent, of a specific search engine visitor i.e. to buy something, to learn something, to store something, to communicate with someone.

This search engine optimization tutorial is aimed at beginners who want a start point for learning the basics of Google SEO without being suckered into buying regurgitated SEO Ebooks not worth the bandwidth to download never mind pay for. Google changes how it works, slightly, every day. You never know which Google DC you are seeing. Nobody knows exactly how Google works. But the principles of SEO are pretty longstanding.

In the end, Google success comes down to quality links from real websites, good content, and good syndication networks be they automated or human. SEO is not free. It can take weeks and even months or years to see the fruit of your labour. And there are no guarantees with SEO. It is however potentially the most rewarding online marketing effort you can make for your business.

This SEO guide to Google is an ongoing project - I thought it would be a useful edition to the site. I’ll be adding links to relevant seo related websites often. Contact me if you want to contribute to improve the page. Subscribe to the Hobo feed to learn about new SEO stuff. A lot of this is my honest personal opinion about SEO or it wouldn’t be here so clearly no warranties. Test everything you read…. yourself. Every site is a different set of circumstances. You don’t stop learning SEO. Google Ranking factors change over time.

Remember deployment of SEO is the art! Hope you enjoy our SEO tutorial – (when we complete the 2012 version!).