Can you help me quickly understand the main principles and actionable approaches to free SEO for small websites?

The thing is that the modern reality of Google’s organic free SEO for websites and marketing blogs is constantly evolving, mainly due to consistently delivered updates. Most of them are designed to improve the existing level of good navigation and overall user experience. At the same time, however, it’s important to remember that a significant part of such recurrent algorithm updates is intended to turn all illegitimate optimization efforts related to Black-Hat/Grey Hat SEO into definitely less effective or even completely non-performing in Google’s organic search listings. In other words, search crawling bots are doing best to locate and identify any means of SEO that are taken with only single purpose – to trick and manipulate with Google’s sophisticated search ranking algorithm. 

That way, should your website be exposed to the illegitimate usage of such optimization tactics, you will be inevitably penalized with a rather severe (and sometimes even irrevocable) ranking penalty – actually resulting in organic ranking demotion, instead of giving you any desired progress with a higher website positioning in Google’s list of the relevant SERPs. Understanding the importance of staying on the safe side when running organic strategies in free SEO for websites, here are several good ways of optimizing yourself with fully legitimate White-Hat SEO. Ultimately, to make sure you’re always keeping your website in compliance with Google’s Guidelines and will never be penalized for all you’ve actually done/currently doing to that point. So, let’s delve.

Actionable & Free SEO Techniques for Small Websites

Keyword Research

No need to say that it’s really important to have the right set of the main target keywords you’re actually optimizing for. To quickly identify the right keyword opportunities and focus on the must-winning long-tail search terms, I recommend running an in-depth keyword research using professional web analytics online platforms like Moz’s Open Site Explorer (nice toolkit specifically tailored to competitive research), Semalt Analyzer (my fave online framework I’m using to delve deep into any website’s online performance), KeywordTool.io (a bit simpler, yet still performing keyword tool with a use-proven performance). Of course, you might as well use a good old Google’s Keyword Planner tool – but I personally believe that the current keyword competition ruling over the modern online search needs a more in-depth and comprehensive analytical approach. That’s it.

Strong Web Copy

The thing is that your web copy (and arguably the rest of all other shreds of on-page SEO content) should be well-optimized for the main target keywords, in line with making good sense for the reader (i.e., simply dropping as many search terms into the context as you can – otherwise, “keyword overstuffing” – isn’t working anymore, and can be even harmful to your organic rankings). Moreover, Google itself now seems fully capable of “reading” and “understanding” the contextual meaning of on-page content, just as if its crawling bots were real humans. From the standpoint of organic free SEO for business websites (and arguably any other web source within Google’s index, disregarding its sphere of industry, main topic, or the element of commerciality), it means that before publishing every shred of new content you should make a double-check and consider additional editorial corrections. Ultimately, to make sure nothing can harm a perfectly flawless user experience, and therefore retain your safe ranking progress over time. Put simply, if your English grammar school teacher wouldn’t find your web copy really great and outstanding, neither will the search engine and its crawling robots.

Title Tags

Make sure to have only well-optimized and properly written Title Tags, simply because they are arguably the most important on-page elements of free SEO found on websites, and especially if you’re running an online business project. Why? Simply because your Title Tag acts as a clickable link clearly displayed in Google’s organic SERPs, which is seen by the users shown directly in the tab of their web browsers. So, given that these on-page content items are bearing the lion’s share of your ranking potential, Title Tags should always be unique, clean & concise, embedded with your most valuable keyword assets, as well as individually tailored to make the right sense for each related web page location. When creating your perfectly performing Title Tags, make sure to be consistent dropping the core target keyword over there (I recommend putting the best relevant search terms closer to the title’s beginning to maximize their ranking potential over there). And considering that your Title Tag length is limited to around 55-60 characters in total, you should utilize this valuable space with maximum efficiency. That way, don’t forget to mention your business brand name (when applicable), in line with separating every single word with hyphens/vertical bars instead of downscores, and making your Page Titles deliver an enticing message that will keep the user’s attention and get better chances of being clicked after all.

Image ALT Tags

The thing is that the search engines are simply unable to “read” or “understand” your visual on-page elements, like images, videos, infographics, etc. That’s why it’s important to help Google’s search crawling bots with the right interpretation and correct indexing procedure via providing a properly optimized Image ALT Tag, Image Title, as well as Filename itself – with all these elements embedded with the relevant keywords and even long-tail search terms that help to describe and summarize each multimedia file found on your web pages. Ideally, Image ALT Tag should provide a brief explanation summarizing the image via short & concise text description (otherwise, something like “image caption”). As for Image Title, nearly everything is self-explanatory over there and fully comparable with Image ALT Tags. Considering custom Filename, it’s commonly applied to each image when you save it. After all, random or standard Filenames coming with each downloaded image by default will hardly make any sense for organic free SEO for websites – that’s why you are strongly recommended to take a moment and make sure these content elements are sufficiently descriptive, short, and are made up of lowercase text separated only with hyphens and nothing else. That’s it.