Learn Basic SEO from Google Itself… For Free

If you ask most established bloggers about their major sources of traffic, organic search traffic (traffic that comes from users clicking on non-paid links from their own search results) is usually #1 or #2 on the list.

Good SEO (search engine optimization) techniques are a great help in getting more traffic from the search engines.

Unfortunately, for the newcomer, the language of SEO is a bit esoteric and some of the concepts can be difficult to grasp.  However, once you understand the basics of good SEO, you can implement most of them pretty easily, just in the normal course of making posts to your blog.  In addition, WordPress makes the mechanics of SEO very easy, in comparison to someone who’s building a site by hand using traditional HTML.

Getting free traffic from Google, Yahoo, and other search engines is so attractive, and often even vital, for website owners that there are many, many courses on SEO out in the marketplace.  They are also many paid SEO tools, services, and consulting firms out there, as well.  The good news is that you can learn many of the basics and reap many of the rewards for free, if you know where to look.

Late last year, with very little fanfare Google released Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide,  a “best practices” SEO guide, right from the horse’s mouth.

Now as the announcement post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog is quick to point out, this 22-page document doesn’t give away any secret formulas.  The exact formula for how Google determines search results is and will remain a Black Box .

After reading this guide, you should come away with a basic understanding of SEO terms and the essentials of how SEO works, which will vault you ahead of the vast majority of bloggers.

One quick caveat, don’t get freaked out at some of the technical recommendations and snippets of code that are shown as examples.  As I mentioned previously, WordPress does a lot of the technical stuff for us, but it does help to have a basic understanding of what’s happening behind the scenes.

Other resources for better SEO for your WordPress blog:

The popular All-in-One SEO Pack plugin does quite a bit to enhance WordPress’s default SEO capabilities.

The Thesis WordPress theme (in addition to being the best damn premium WP theme out there), makes the All-in-One SEO plugin unnecessary, since it has tons of SEO friendly customization features built in.  If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to a premium theme, this is just one more reason why Thesis should be at the top of your list.

~Craig

What kind of SEO tactics do you use on your blog right now that you feel give you good results?