Firstly the reason this is written as a series of SEO articles is for SEO itself and will allow us to make each article focused and use all the guidelines we are about to discover in the series.

PLEASE NOTE: Your first focus should always be to make a user friendly experience, we do not suggest techniques to trick the search engines (Black Hat SEO) into thinking your website is more authoritative than it should be. You need to have good quality content and give the user what they are looking for. However these beginners guide to SEO articles will help you make your website Search Engine Friendly (SEF) and if followed correctly will improve both the user experience and potentially increase your traffic.

We are going to focus on Google; this is simply because Google has more than 80% of the New Zealand Search engine market. Yahoo and Bing along with a myriad of other small search engines make up the rest. You can safety assume that the basic SEO instructions will apply to all major search engines as they all have the same goal, that is "Provide relevant accurate information for a given keyword search"

What is our SEO Goal?

There are two types of search results "Paid" and "Organic". Our goal is we want to achieve "Organic" search results on page one of Google (and other search engines but I will use Google only from now on).

Paid Search Results

Paid search results are results that show in "sponsored results" in two locations on the Google search results page. There are usually 2 paid adverts at the top of the page above all the Organic results and a list of up to 10 down the right hand side of the page. Essentially you can pay Google using a service called AdWords to display your add. When someone clicks on the add Google gets a fee and the searcher is directed to your website. This is called Pay Per Click or PPC for short. That is a whole other section and the purpose of these articles is to achieve Organic search Results.

Organic search results (Page one)

The Organic Search Results are the FREE results that start just under the top "Sponsored Results" section. The only way your website can show up here is if Google thinks your website or a page in your website is the most relevant, in which case you will be number one; or Google thinks you are in the top 10 most accurate results for a given keyword search. Remember a Search Engines purpose is to display information the searcher will think is relevant for the word or words they typed into the search bar.

So how do I get on page one of Google?

This is an enormous question and has a multitude on answers. However we are starting with the basics which once implemented will make your website User Friendly and Search Engine Friendly (SEF) and then you can look at more advanced SEO and link building activities.

A Beginners Guide To Search Engine Optimisation - The Page Title tag