Being "friendly" is not only a quality your mother taught you to have so people would like you, but it also applies to the search engine optimisation world and describes the relationship that should exist between your website and the "engines" that drive consumers to your site. SEO tutorials and basic SEO courses teach you how to apply this vital skill to your business and will ultimately help you expand your group of client "friends."

Search engine optimization can be divided into two main elements: on-page optimization, as well as off-page optimization. On-site refers to what you control and change on your site, while off-site is all the elements that work without you being aware of it all the time and that are located outside of your website. Considering both of these aspects, search engines "rank" your site in order of, but not in a literal sense, "importance." This is why it is so important to work through at least one SEO tutorial or even a free SEO course to get to know the ins and outs of both on- and off-site optimisation. By building a site properly from the start and adding relevant and helpful links as you go, you will soon have all the free marketing you need on the net and might even get "page 1" rankings.

To be "search engine friendly", you will see that all SEO tutorials tell you it is crucial to ensure every page is compliant with search engine standards and ready to be indexed correctly. Solid keyword research is essential, and will make the SEO task a lot easier down the line. These places include the page title (the title should be short and should describe the content of the page correctly); in the meta tags (Use the "description" and "keywords" meta tags in the head of each web page and make them different on each web page); in heading tags (many search engines emphasise these and they support the main headings or titles) and in your content throughout (your page text should include your keywords in about every 150 words or so, but should not be overused and should not give the text an unnatural quality). Keep in mind that search engines only understand textual content - text within images will not show up. Ultimately, using keywords in a controlled and simple way without trying to overwhelm the text with them is the best way to go.

When it comes to off-site SEO, all SEO tutorials will emphasise the importance of links, social networks and blogs. These are extremely important, but do not forget that you should continuously update these elements: they may ensure a free form of marketing, but they will not do the work for you! Also, begin building your "opt-in" list of prospects and customers, so that you can market to them later on. This means you contact them directly and build a relationship. Of course, a basic SEO tutorial will advise you on the unspoken rules of SEO and ensure that you don't get your website banned by Google!

You need to learn a bit about SEO before you try optimize your site, or else you're just going to end up wasting your time. A simple SEO tutorial will teach you the basics.