The reason social is such a natural extension of search is that it adds both relevancy and authority. Think about this: According to Nielsen research, 92% of consumers worldwide trust recommendations from friends and family more than any form of advertising. This is up from 74% in 2007. Having an …

One of the primary triggers in their algorithm is domain authority, which Google calculates based on a myriad of factors; in fact, the RankBrain system that Google uses employs more than 200 ranking signals. Just like you should interview others, seize opportunities to be interviewed, no matter how small the …

Setting up Google My Business is a must for your SEO gameplan. It is this that dictates whether your business will claim the space on the right hand side of the SERPs (the Knowledge Panel) when someone searches for your business by name. With SERP space at a premium, owning …

It makes sense to use the same keywords in titles and headlines, simply because a single page should always define it's topic as exactly as possible. This means there will always be only two or three main keywords any given page will need to be optimized for. Is your product …

Unlike some aspects of the mysterious Quality Score “secret sauce,” we know that Google takes landing page relevance into account when calculating Quality Score Google has been focused on semantic search and now uses something called Latent-Semantic Indexing (LSI) in its core Hummingbird engine. Domain authority is a score (on …

One of the best ways to start earning links is by creating something of use or interest to your audience. We’ve all seen them – the pieces of content that educate or entertain us, without being the core product of a website. As you may well know, Google has altered …

The permalink is the full URL you see – and use – for any given post, page or other pieces of content on your site. It’s a permanent link, hence the name permalink. f you are familiar with Google’s algorithm, you are aware that it is predicated based off of …

Today, due to the way backlinks are evaluated based on different industry-related ranking factors, it is less quantity focused and more about the quality of sites from which the links are coming. The bottom line is that if you’re focusing on a small group of generic keywords, you’re …

Building a strong site architecture and providing clear navigation will help search engines index your site quickly and easily. This will also, more importantly, provide visitors with a good experience of using your site and encourage repeat visits. Make sure at least one image file name includes your target keyword …

Measure and monitor what is working and update your strategy on the fly. Although Google Plus might be one of the less popular social networks out there, it’s still part of the Google Suite of applications and does play a part in boosting your site’s search visibility. The …

Whenever I speak to people about SEO, the number one question that I get asked is, “What’s the most important factor to rank number one in Google?” While building a better search engine optimization strategy, having a description tag that is efficient is a good way to bring searchers …

Keywords should appear in important on-page elements like the page title, heading, image alt text, and naturally throughout the page copy, but you should still be sure to craft each of these items for humans, not search engines There are few things more frustrating and downright annoying than investing a …

Have you ever wondered why Google.com delivers different results for a user in the US than for a user in Germany? Google, now more than ever, don't just want more content, they want content that they feel is quality. Standard engagement behaviours on SERP results, such as click-throughs and …

If your blog lists your individual posts in order of the date that they were published, like most blogs do, then the older your blog post gets, the lower down the website architecture it goes. Who wants to get a 404 page after clicking on a link? Broken links make …

Beware, excessive linking, either internal or external can lead to the exact opposite results. Make sure that every link serves its own purpose in your content. There’s no denying that a website’s popularity correlates with how high it ranks in search engine results, and in a way, backlinks …

Historically, traffic from search engines has been about a very singular pursuit -- that of rankings. Another “old school” method of building up your backlinks is to make use of Forum Posting. It is a quick, easy and sometimes even fun way to get your links out and maybe even have …

Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic on the World Wide Web. After-all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. Google has placed an increased onus on trust in recent times. If Google trusts your site, it …

A natural link profile has variety. The links come from different domains and links will have different strengths. Audit links back to your website and make sure they’re primarily from trustworthy, reputable websites. If you’ve been producing content in a haphazard manner, hoping and praying that some of …

Optimizing your images gives your website an additional chance to be found via image search. Many blogging software packages automatically nofollow user comments, but those that don't can most likely be manually edited to do this. Many marketers are so focused on building out site hierarchy, wireframing and design of …

The goal of negative SEO is to lower the rankings of competitor websites. This, they believe, will subsequently elevates their own rankings once the competition is out of the way. When working on your content, you should take the next biggest thing into account: voice search. Yes, it’s been …

If the wrong people are hitting your website, it's all for nothing Not so long ago, SEO and social media marketing were different things. The idea was that SEO attracted visitors and social media marketing kept them coming back. Don ’t keyword stuff – write naturally using synonyms, relevant terms and …

If you execute your keyword research properly, you’ll end up with a long list of search terms you want to be found for. Make sure to search for those terms in Google yourself. What results are there already? Who will be your online competitors for these search terms? What …

While you should not hide your heading tag in an image, you should still give search engines more opportunities to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and file name. The new key to off-page SEO? You need to create content that other people find …

The search engines may not apply the entirety of a domain’s trust and link juice weight to subdomains. This is largely due to the fact that a subdomain could be under the control of a different party, and therefore in the search engine’s eyes it needs to be …

The biggest factor in the SEO revolution is the rise of content. Instead of stung blog posts with the right formatting and wording to make it to the top of search results, users are looking for quality content (not basic or timely information) more than ever. So is Google. Every …

Ranking high on search engines relies on a variety of different factors, including the quality of the content you write. As you use content to deliver keywords and reach audiences, you’ll rank higher in search engines and increase authority with your site visitors. Think of outreach as a brand …

Content creation and distribution is essential for SEO. Content is about much more than what's on your website. It's necessary to build your online real estate and create content that will improve visibility across the web. An SEO campaign without content is severely limited. By putting out content, not only …

The search engines analyze the reading level of the web page. One popular formula for doing this is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula, which considers things like the average word length and the number of words in a sentence to determine the level of education needed to be able …

Mobile search is outshining desktop search. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly so users can easily navigate your site from their phone, especially if you are small, local business. Always remember your competition is working towards getting itself ranked on the first position. SEM is a continuous process: it’s …

Web users want to see what the content (and therefore the title) is about without having to click on it. Allowing the readers to read the whole title in the search results will attract more qualified leads and customers to your site because they will know what they’re getting …

One of the problems international businesses continuously need to address is identifying themselves as “local” in the eyes of the search engines. You don't need to write at a doctorate level to rank at the top of Google. You simply need to write at a higher reading level than normal …

You will never get enough traffic on your website. That’s the human nature. We always strive for more. According to research by Google, smartphone users have a higher buyer intent than desktop users. They’re focused and ready to buy. It’s your job to be there when they …

To ensure the best web browsing experience possible, the software engineers at Google created a search ranking algorithm that thinks like Internet users. Today, queries don’t just return a list of ten blue, ordered links. They return results with images, videos, profile pictures, and all manner of meta data …

Be careful not to focus too much on one single key phrase otherwise your site could grow repetitive, and earn a penalty. Select the best related keywords and start a list. Words with low competition will catch your eye as opportunities. Those are keywords people are searching for, but there …

Google has come out and said that HTTPS is a confirmed ranking factor. That said, they haven’t actually confirmed how much this impacts search rankings. There is no single place to focus when trying to optimize a website for search engines, so it is important to make updates and …

To a search engine, relevance means more than finding a page with the right words. Write legible, readable copy, and treat the meta description as if it’s an advert for your web-page To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different …

You already know that a considerable amount of Internet traffic these days comes from mobile operating systems. Even though it seems logical, initially, to strive for a ranking using high-traffic keywords and terms, this will most likely result in a lot of frustration and wasted resources. Moreover, the traffic that …

Creating a plan of works for improving your search engine rankings or identifying why a website isn’t ranking well isn’t always straight forwards. Despite countless claims over the years that have proclaimed the death of link building it is still very much alive and kicking. Not only is …

How do you find people who value SEO enough to pay your prices? Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they're quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help. Did you …

The most important user signals are the bounce rate and the click-through rate (CTR). These are important for your SEO, as Google takes these seriously. There have been a number of debates over the years about the SEO value of having keywords in your domain URL. Would you rather read …