Get Optimized

Get Optimized: Visibility, Relevance, and Ranking in an AI World

By Adam Charles Johnston

Search has changed, and so has the way people discover information online.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is no longer just about choosing keywords and getting your website to the top of Google. People now discover content through search engines, social platforms, video, and increasingly, AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT.

Understanding how these systems work, and how to make your content easier to find, is becoming an important skill for anyone with an online presence.

Get Optimized is a practical introduction to SEO, written for website owners, content creators, developers, marketers, and anyone interested in improving their visibility online.

The book breaks down technical concepts into straightforward explanations, using relatable examples, analogies, and a little humour along the way. It's designed to be approachable for beginners, including readers who find traditional technical guides difficult to follow, while still offering useful insights for those with some SEO experience.

• How search engines work: Understand crawling, indexing, ranking, and how search technology has developed over time.

• Keyword research and search intent: Learn what people are actually searching for and how to create content that meets their needs.

• On-page and technical SEO: Explore website structure, internal linking, metadata, performance, and other factors that influence discoverability.

• Content strategy: Organise information clearly, develop relevant topics, and create content that's useful to readers.

• Links and authority: Understand the role of backlinks, credibility, and building a trustworthy online presence.

• SEO beyond traditional search: Explore how AI, social media, video platforms, and changing search habits influence the way content is discovered.

• Measuring results: Get to grips with analytics, search performance, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

SEO can feel unnecessarily complicated, particularly when advice is filled with jargon, conflicting opinions, and promises of quick results.

This book takes a more straightforward approach.

Originally developed in 2018 and extensively rewritten in 2023 and 2025, Get Optimized brings together years of research, practical knowledge, and observations about the changing search landscape.

Rather than presenting SEO as a collection of tricks to beat an algorithm, it focuses on understanding why certain approaches work, how search engines interpret information, and how to make better decisions about your own content.

The chapters are organised into manageable sections, with clear headings, explanations, and a glossary to help make unfamiliar terminology easier to understand.

Whether you're launching your first website, growing a small business, writing a blog, developing digital projects, or looking to improve your existing SEO knowledge, Get Optimized provides a foundation you can build upon.

You don't need to be a developer or marketing professional to get started. Just an interest in understanding how the web works and how to make your content more visible.

The book is also supported by Get Optimized, a free online learning resource featuring SEO lessons, explanations, and practical tools.

Visit https://get-optimized.pages.dev to explore the website and continue learning alongside the book.

Good SEO starts with understanding how people search, how information is found, and what makes content genuinely useful.

Get Optimized helps you put those principles into practice.