If you’re familiar with SEO, you’ll already know the importance of keyword research – it ensures that you’re targeting terms that searchers genuinely use when looking for businesses like yours. Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner is a great free tool to get started with, but be sure to use …

Build trust and engagement. Build these through the aforementioned speed, plus content that speaks to their needs. The combination of those two things also makes your site mobile-friendly, so they get a good experience on any of their devices. If you want to achieve a higher ranking on Google and …

To keep it simple you can use a link shortener that 301s such as bit.ly, or if you want to spend a little more time you can set up your own site and 301 the traffic from a certain page to your money site. There are an awful lot …

The searches that people make online are related to certain words or phrases. Because you want your webpage to be the answer or solution to their search query, your page needs to be built with this phrase or word in mind. At the end of the day, Google makes decisions …

Every website has its own issues, but all websites benefit from optimizing the conversion rate. It really doesn’t matter if your goal is more sales, more Facebook likes or more newsletter subscribers. Arguably, one of the most crucial aspects of on-page SEO is tags. Whether it’s title tags …

Instead of willy-nilly linking to pages from site-wide elements, like the top navigation or the footer, consider the value of the pages that you intend to throw in the navigation. Try to limit your sitewide links to only the 20 percent of your pages that are the most valuable, and …

By performing Search Engine Optimization on a website, it is possible to make that website show up more often in search results, as well as higher on the list of results given when search engine users search for similar stuff on those various search engines. Google has worked to smash …

Google/Bing Webmaster Tools allows you to submit multiple pages at once by submitting your sitemap(s). Sitemaps also have the added benefit of supplying a few other useful pieces of information about your web pages to the search engines, Ranking potential is an assessment of where you can realistically …

The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about. Google uses what’s called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) when crawling a website, scanning your copy not just for the keyword but for keywords that are commonly …

Learn which industry ranking factors are important to your business and how to improve your online rankings. User experience improves with original content, quick page loading, pages that fulfill their promise and easy site navigation. Authority enhances a site’s longevity, and the quality of its backlinks plays a major …

Making your content easy to read and understand helps make it useful to your readers. Some experts also believe that Google takes readability into account when ranking webpages. If you need search engine optimisation help for your small business website, consider working with an SEO agency or hiring an SEO …

Before you publish, please proofread! Google doesn’t like spelling or grammar errors. Oh and don’t try to hide your keywords by, for example, placing them behind images because Google is much smarter than that. If your site had a stable flow of traffic and then it began to …

Including a Contact Us page on your website and putting the link in the navigation not only makes for good user experience (especially if you have an ecommerce site) but can also potentially earn you some Google juice. People really love to check their search rankings. Many companies want to …

Do a thorough check of your site to make sure it's displaying correctly with no missing content or error messages. If you've recently added a feature or new site design it could be it's slowing the site speed down or causing other problems. Meaningful content that operates as part of …

Results driven, intelligent search engine optimisation. Anybody can optimise a site with a little know-how. With all the signals in the Google algorithm – and there are hundreds of them – why would links still be so valuable as a signal? With the vastly reduced price of international communication and shipping, a …

Besides looking for established companies and Internet presences to learn from, you can also pick up some good tips and quick information from up and coming companies that are suddenly doing well in the rankings. Keyword selection is the starting point of the small business SEO process. You must choose …

Imagine for a moment, a yacht. The on-page elements represent the sails and the ropes above water. Now imagine the technical elements of SEO are everything below the water line: the hull and the cabin. So you could have your sails blowing, and your knots tied correctly, but if there …

When building your content, it’s important to remember to give the crawlers enough to bite into. A hundred words typically isn’t enough copy for these crawlers to read and understand what the content is about. And this content shouldn’t be stuffed with keywords either, as some search …

Every market, every vertical, even every product has a unique SEO landscape. Patience and persistence will play key roles in your success. Make a list of the top 10 business directories and build an engaging, content-rich business profiles on each of them. On regular pages and posts, Google will most …

Keyword research is absolutely critical to help you understand where your content can earn both short- and long-term wins while making your content more competitive in search engines. As it may seem obvious by now, there is more to writing SEO-friendly content than ensuring you get a healthy ratio of …

You can hire good writers, but that is often an expensive proposition. You may be under the impression that it will take an extensive amount of time to create enough content to make a difference or to start appearing in the search results. Just breathe. Even the creation of one …

A focus on the formatting of your page can facilitate the crawling for search engines, while it also enhances the readability for your readers. There is no exact word count when we talk about the “long content.” There are studies showing 2,000+ word articles dominating the SERPs’ top for …

Links still matter. We should just think of them differently. Consider whether the links you attract will actually drive qualified traffic to your site, rather than just adding to antiquated metrics like external link volume. One of the basic tools of the trade for an SEO practitioner is the search …

The sites that Google will rank highest for a particular search term are the ones that appear the most relevant and that have the best content and best design. At the same time though, they will also be the ones that have the most trust. This means that Google considers …

Besides studying your web analytics data and using keyword research tools, there is another very simple research method: Use the search engine itself to do keyword research. Good SEO means forgetting SEO and concentrating on your user then. And it also means forgetting SEO in that you are going to …

The methods vary from technical practices you can achieve behind the scenes on your website (we tend to refer to this as ‘on-page SEO’) to all the promotional ’off-page’ approaches you can use to raise your site’s visibility (link-building, social media marketing). Make sure you optimize your content with …

Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)? Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and subcategory pages …

If you recently moved to HTTPS or you plan to do so, mixed content is something you’ll most likely have to deal with. We use keyword research to identify potentially useful queries for which a site is not receiving traffic. Keyword research is often abused by aggressive Web marketers …

Start as you mean to go on: titles are the best places to get started with SEO. Regardless of what the search engines think, a snappy, relevant title will help attract readers on any platform. Think of Amazon. They probably have a few best-selling products, but the majority of their …

Think of Amazon. They probably have a few best-selling products, but the majority of their retail revenue comes from a wide variety of things that aren’t bought anywhere nearly as often as their best-selling products. Similarly, if we were to rank the popularity of the songs played in the …

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 …