How SEO works for a big brand with an established reputation and a massive marketing team, PR agency and all of that stuff is very different to how SEO works for some local tradesmen with a low-end budget that has to catch up with the big boys. The number and …

Search engines reward sites that are user friendly, which means they have high usability. Google favors sites that are not only rich in keywords, but also demonstrate user engagement. Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will …

An effective link building strategy that simply makes a lot of sense is fixing broken links on your site and on sites that you’d like a link from. Your first step is to look for broken links on pages that interest you. After finding the links that go to …

Either a piece of content can help your website’s search engine rankings or it can hurt your rankings. Google, now more than ever, don't just want more content, they want content that they feel is quality. Expect increased conversions, particularly those from visitors who arrived via organic search. Dealing …

Having quality inbound links is thus, a crucial SEO technique that only increases the authority and credibility of your website. Googlebot uses sitemaps and databases of links discovered during previous crawls to determine where to go next. Whenever the crawler finds new links on a site, it adds them to …

You shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs …

It’s a common misconception that the internet is the ultimate learning environment. Yes, you can find everything you need, for free, but the information you end up with is not always trustworthy. It’s scattered, often outdated and sometimes contradictory. Controlling most of the navigation from page to page …

Don't feel obligated to purchase a search engine optimization service. Some companies claim to "guarantee" high ranking for your site in Google's search results. While legitimate consulting firms can improve your site's flow and content, others employ deceptive tactics in an attempt to fool search engines. Make sure that all …

All Javascript and CSS files on your site must be unblocked. That means Google must be able to access those files so that it can see the site as a normal visitor does. Successive Google algorithm updates have seen the nature of SEO change radically. Where once processes such as …

SEO requires so much content because it wants to grow. Google doesn’t want to see a stagnant, unchanging website. It wants to know you’re building up strong, useful and relevant content so it can deliver the best results for every search. Keyword research is an entire sub-discipline within …

If a person goes looking for a company or product by name, Google will steer them towards what they’re looking for. Successive Google algorithm updates have seen the nature of SEO change radically. Where once processes such as keyword stuffing – cramming words that are popular in Google searches into …

Having more pages that are optimized for different keywords gives you increased opportunity for traffic. It doesn't necessarily mean more traffic, though, since it depends on how popular and how competitive those new keywords are. For sites “with just a few things to mark up,” Google also offers a tool …

One day it’s perfectly OK to work in a certain way, the next day a search engine algorithm change destroys your rankings. Luckily it’s usually possible to recover your visibility, or at least some of it, whether it’s a matter of asking for a reconsideration or changing …

Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources. If your products or services are good and you have a solid marketing strategy, you will achieve both PageRank and customers. If, on the other hand, you do anything to piss …

Google can, and does, ignore low relevance links. The worst offenders are generic links (“click here”) and even worse, off-topic links. A marketer who dives deep on this topic can find dozens of opportunities to enhance their listing and earn more traffic. Because these days, it’s not enough to …

Google has always encouraged webmasters to make their primary focus one of providing a good user experience. As the algorithm gets “smarter”, websites that do so are positioned to benefit the most. Great content marketing is essentially the bait you put on the end of your hook to attract the …

To achieve long-term SEO results, you must have a strong web foundation built on targeting terms related to your business, industry, and offerings. If you don’t target and rank for the right terms, your audience won’t be able to find you. So one of the most important SEO …

As you gather intel on your website’s audience, the competition and commonly used keywords, it’s up to you to make informed decisions to determine which SEO strategies make sense for your business. Staying relevant is crucial to ensuring your website visitors are happy with what they find on …

Site owners must focus on the quality of the backlinks rather than number of backlinks. Quality links mean links from a relevant site with a higher authority. Images, videos, slideshows and audio act as a signal of quality content to search engines… after all, you have put in the work …

Write locally oriented content: It’s one of the best things you can do to improve local rankings. The best way to get backlinks from other blogs and from social media sites is to write posts that are engaging and worth sharing. There are literally hundreds of factors that contribute …

People either go to Google to find something quickly, or they go there to find something they can trust. For speed, they’ll be happy with paid ads. For confidence in quality, they’ll opt for organic search results. Pretty simple, right? Well-written content is also far more likely to …

Once you know your goals, you should be able at least to decide on a balance between “head” keywords and “long-tail” keywords. Realize that meta keywords are only used by your competitor to see what you want to rank for. Google still doesn’t use them. You need to produce …

If a search engine recognizes cloaking it will penalize the website by permanently removing it from the search engine index. The website will no longer appear in search results. Let’s begin with something practical – think of all the important topics our website is about. Don’t try and come …

If everybody is linking people from their sites to yours, your site must thus offer top quality information worthy of a link. Therefore, Google and search engines alike bump these backlink-wealthy sites nearer the top of their pages in order to ensure people are finding the best sites for the …

Outbound, or external, links are links pointing outwards from your site to another website. They pass along some of your own site’s ranking power. Authority is measured by the quantity and quality of inbound links to your site, as well as its technical performance and structure. Write good content …

At the end of the day, consumers want to feel like they’re always interacting with something natural and real. Google tends to prefer Featured Snippet content that begin logically as an answer would. In order to please both the search engines (who will reward you with high rankings over …

Keep in mind that you don’t need to think of Google as your audience. You write for your visitors and not for Google. SEO’s journey to a technicality driven practice of giving priority to the subject-matter elucidates how content marketing fits the bill. As the web is becoming …

To optimize your search engine results it is important to make your URL easily identifiable. Include words that are relevant to the site as opposed to numbers and symbols. People will recognize those keywords in the URL, and are more likely to click on your link if they think it …

Audit your site using tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights or Pingdom’s speed test to quickly compile a list of options to help give your site a little more zip. You may even need to review your hosting service if it’s holding you back… Readability has never …

Researching your audience will give you an idea of their interests, wants, needs and how they respond to certain words and phrases. Doing A/B testing is a great way to see what title is most successful with your audience. Get reputable websites to link to you. You can achieve …

The primary goals of most SEO practitioners are to increase rank in the SERP and drive traffic, but they are not going far enough. If you want to increase your rank for your particular web page or website on different search engines such as Bing, Google as well as Yahoo …

Many businesses assume that they don’t need to worry about keyword research. They think they know what terms people use to find what they sell, and they also assume that Google understands the content on their website. This is incorrect on all counts. While it's true that keyword-stuffing will …

Apart from knowing which search terms people use, you need to know whether or not your idea for your post or page fits the desires and expectations of the people who use the search terms. The best way to find out whether or not your content fits these desires is …

Using your focus keyword in the headline can also be a good idea, but don’t try too hard to include it. Use power words and avoid redundancy to create a clear and appealing result. Aim for a headline of 55-60 characters, as this is what Google will display on …

Some of the first things you probably think of with regards to SEO are links. Links are good. We need lots of links to our site, and to our pages, to be successful. This is part of Authority, that sneaky third aspect of SEO. To add to your understanding of …

Markup logos, images, addresses, phone numbers, business name, type of business, reviews, prices, software, and anything else that’s relevant to the site. Clients will thank you and visitors will appreciate it. SEO offers incredible opportunity and access (it's an inherently free marketing channel) to inbound traffic, but it can …

Think about SEO from the perspective of the minds behind Google. Through deep learning, the goals of the developers behind Google is to generate search results that genuinely benefit the user. To truly understand whether your SEO campaign is working, you need to learn which measurements deserve your attention. Just …

To improve content performance, brands need to stop producing content for content’s sake and instead produce smart content: Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say "might" because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your …

The bottom line is that if you’re focusing on a small group of generic keywords, you’re probably not being found by most of the people who are searching for you. Visitors who really like the look or feel of a website are more likely to recommend the website …

The focus on the right audience and the right content brings an understanding of the content that they’re more likely to consume. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a specialized form of content writing that can be extremely effective in boosting the amount of traffic that comes to your …