SEO is a mysterious discipline to a lot of people. Some see it as a bit of a dark art, while others are intimidated by some of the technical aspects of it and consider it beyond their skillset. While both these viewpoints have some degree of validity, they overlook the fact that the bulk of good SEO is actually just the application of common sense. Once you understand the principles behind SEO, you will no longer seek to apply X and Y technique in the hope of seeing improvements; you will automatically know how to think and how to write in order to achieve all of these goals and more.
All too often, people try to come across as SEO experts by talking about “301 redirects”, “XML sitemaps” and “alt tags” and throwing a whole load of fancy-sounding terminology around in order to look impressive. While you will need to understand the principles behind all of these (and many more), the fundamentals of SEO don’t start with buzzwords and jargon, but are based around simple, considered principles that, once understood, will unlock a world of potential limited only by the time you have to spend on them.
This introduction is the first in a series of blog posts that we will be writing in order to explain how SEO works, and what you can do to improve the optimisation of your website. You may require technical assistance from your web support to do some of the initial on-page changes, but once those are in place you’ll be able to manage your own SEO in-house and track your progress. We will be dividing the series up into chapters, each with multiple parts. The first chapter, entitled “A Brief History of Google”, will explain how the significance of Google, and road the company taken to get where it is today. More that just a history lesson, this will explain the various ‘algorithm changes’ that Google has put in place over the years, and what they have been looking to achieve with these.
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