Google have released a free PDF document called the Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide. 

Pulling this together is a great victory for common sense and will help demystify a subject some people can obsess over.

The guide deals with around a dozen basic topics for websites that want to achieve good organic search engine rankings and they boil down to creating great content, easy navigation, sharing and indexing.

Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.

Google SEO Starter Guide v1.1

Of course this isn’t to say that SEO is easy. Creating great content is always going to take work, but it does allow us to focus on what matters and take a welcome break from the smoke and mirrors of some SEO companies.

But what about SEO Companies?
There is still a place for SEO companies, as there are a number of things Google aren’t telling us here, but I do hope that this guide helps shift the conversation back towards the users of websites, and away from the less-savoury end of Search Engine Optimisation. Not surprisingly, as a company that creates accessible, content-rich websites, we’d welcome that!