I am passionate about SEO, and digital marketing more generally, but I also understand it has its pitfalls, the main one being the complex, crowded and confusing market for SEO services. If you are focused on a local market, it is also important to get connected with local businesses and …

Search engines also assess, in great detail, the technical aspects of your website. For example, how quickly the site loads plays a major role in your website ranking. Search engines also take into account how accessible your server is. Because, ultimately, Google and other search engines want to provide the …

Create profiles for your business (and include a link to your website) on major directory sites such as Google My Business, Yelp, Angie’s List, Yellow Pages, and other listing resources associated with your industry. A fantastic and free way to get new ideas for keywords in your niche is …

Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your company is in a related niche. Link-building can also come from building a targeted and involved community. The more regular visitors a site has, and the more passionate those fans are, the more …

Your homepage is the most important and likely your strongest webpage. The link power (AKA link juice) is distributed from the homepage to all other subpages. Ideally, you should distribute the link juice evenly to all other subpages through internal links and easy navigation menus. By starting a blog — or …

Understanding and recognizing how PageRank flows can make a difference in your SEO campaigns. The difference in many cases will be small, but in a competitive environment, every advantage counts. Ensure the number of new site visitors arriving via organic search is growing, month to month and year over year …

Brands are generally most interested in gaining follow links as opposed to no-follow links because they help to increase ranking positions. But there’s a problem that has come from this. For some time now, brands have been incentivising bloggers to add unmarked paid for follow links – which is against …

Whereas a page's title may be a few words or a phrase, a page's description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. The three main pillars of Search Engine Optimization; content, links and site architecture will remain for years to come. This methodology has been …

With for instance the rise of voice search, longer keyphrases become more and more common. Using a long keyphrase five times in your 300-word-article will look so unnatural, that it’s not a good practice at all, where using a certain keyword five times might fit there. Essentially, try to …

Getting backlinks are important but if you get a ton of useless backlinks from irrelevant spammy sites or use “link software” then you’re doomed. In short, success in SEO marketing lies in adhering to good practice and avoiding silly mistakes. Most people can make a short (or long) list …

Keyword usage on a page is much more complicated these days. SEO professionals used to go as far as calculating the number of times a keyword appeared on a page to try to be in some kind of ideal percentage. That’s simply not applicable anymore and search engines are …

Google is pretty good at understanding the general context of a site’s content. If you’ve been producing content in a haphazard manner, hoping and praying that some of it eventually ranks, it’s time to buckle down and commit to a more methodical SEO content strategy for the …

To truly understand whether your SEO campaign is working, you need to learn which measurements deserve your attention. Increasingly Google is moving away from giving keywords top priority when it comes to ranking signals and is instead giving preference to the user experience. It is not known how many users …

The focus on the right audience and the right content brings an understanding of the content that they’re more likely to consume. If you run a small business, gaining exposure and driving traffic to your website is probably a key part of your marketing strategy. If you’ve got …

Search engine optimization should be a part of a website for its lifetime, continuously improving its ability to make a brand (and its content) be more visible and to create a better experience for users. If you are currently producing five articles a week that get less than 100 visits …

When we talk about trust through age, we're talking about the indexed age (i.e. the time since Google originally found you). But, more importantly, what happened over the time since Google discovered your site or page. Without on page optimization of your content which talks about your website, there …

Rather than targeting a broad audience, local SEO is about chiseling down and honing in your reach to target a specific group of people living in a certain area. It’s all about making the most of the existing relationships, communities, and consumer ties. Content Creation is the basis of …

Don ’t keyword stuff – write naturally using synonyms, relevant terms and lots of nouns Build a brand and focus on consistent quality. Search engines typically assume that the more popular a site, page, or document, the more valuable the information it contains must be. Billions of searches are performed each …

For me internal linking is one of the most undervalued aspects of SEO, with many sites having inefficient menus and/or poor site structures. Your job is to scope out sites that might be responsive to a message from you, to look at the type of content they publish and …

95% of the U.S. Internet browsing population accesses search engines each month. Furthermore, the U.S. online population makes an average of 37 search engine visits per person per month. Over time, you’ll gather data that helps you determine which of your keywords are most successful, and which …

Measure and monitor what is working and update your strategy on the fly. Sometimes you just can’t target a specific keyword on a product or service page of your website – it just won’t fit and look natural. In these instances you can always take advantage of having a …

When writing a new post, always link to previous relevant articles you have written. That will help your users spend more time on your website by visiting other useful articles. When you are brought on to handle the SEO for a particular website, one of the first things you need …

In social search, content that has a social connection to you in some way is prioritized. A social connection could mean someone you are linked to via Facebook, Twitter, or any other major social network. If your site is regularly updated it shows Google the site is still active, kept …

When it comes to getting your content to the top of the search rankings there’s a number of methods you can employ. But if there’s one constant that runs through them all then that would be the importance of keywords. Creative, interesting, and informational articles that really speak …

Search engines have made it clear: a vitally important part of the future of search is “rich results.” In a nutshell, the combination of seamless user experience with quality content can have a very positive impact on your SEO rankings. The job of an SEO specialist doesn’t stop with …

The prospect of Google penalties strikes fear into the hearts of most webmasters -- or at least the ones who don’t fully understand them. Setting up a successful SEO strategy can be quite hard. Investing in your skills will definitely pay off though. If you do decide to use an …

Google will penalize spammy sites, and unfortunately this causes some bad behavior from bad actors. Say, for example, you wanted to take out a competitor. You could send a bunch of obviously spammy links to their site and get them penalized. This is called “negative SEO,” and is something that …

Using structured data, you can serve Google your address details in the most convenient way. If your motive was only to cross link your website and that is why you have created websites, do not forget that search engines are smart. They will get to know that and will penalize …

Find out which channels are driving traffic to your competition . Generally speaking, backlinks are considered to be a “vote” of confidence for the content that’s being linked to on your domain from outside sources. Make it easier for search engines to index your website. Google is better at working …

Spam links often go both ways. A website that links to spam is likely spam itself, and in turn often has many spam sites linking back to it. Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite …

A headline is usually the first thing we notice when accessing a search engine, and this reminds us that a headline should be: valuable, relevant, simple and appealing. So let’s say you’ve nailed down the art of quality content that solves a problem. That’s still not enough …

A lot of marketers focus on social in their online marketing strategy. But, it’s important to use both online search and social. Search is more powerful than social and more effective when supported by social. The search engines tend to give pages with longer, more in-depth content a higher …

To achieve and maintain good placements on result pages (SERPs) over the long term, you should follow the search engine’s guidelines and focus on your target visitors (this approach is called “White Hat SEO”). Google and other search engines very quickly identify non-permitted, manipulative techniques and your website could …

Getting third parties to link their websites to yours is a critical part of SEO. Without inbound links, there is little to no chance of ranking for competitive terms in search engines such as Google, whose algorithm relies heavily on link measuring and weighting criteria. Cross linking is a great …

Technical SEO lays a solid foundation that gives your content the best chance to rank for relevant keywords and phrases. 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 …

Wouldn’t it be great to give Google & Bing a list of all the pages we want them to notice? With XML sitemaps you can do just that. This is a file you add to your website (normally at yourdomain.uk/sitemap.xml) that lists the URLs for a site …

The obvious engagement related thing is social media. Check some social platforms, starting with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram to see if your desired audience is present on these platforms. f you are familiar with Google’s algorithm, you are aware that it is predicated based off of backlinks. This …

On-page optimization is one part of search engine optimization and, as the name suggests, it covers all the measures and modifications that are made on your own website. There are several elements on your website which you can influence and which enable search engines to index your content and understand …

Like all things when it comes to building an effective SEO strategy research is key! Don’t be afraid to check out your competitor’s sites and other similar websites to see what long tail keywords they’re using. This can give you a great springboard to base new ideas …

The basic premise is that a page will show up in search engine results because the website had mentioned the terms that were being searched for on the website page. Of course, many websites use the same keywords on the same page. SEO results are only keenly felt long-term, and …