I think it's good to have lots of content on the website given the 'long tail' nature of searchers' keyword queries. With all the searching your potential customers are doing, you can gain a great deal of information about exactly what they’re looking for. Inadequate traffic and lack of …

Target 500 to 1,000 words per post without sounding spammy or repetitive. Trust me — 500 words is not difficult when you know your business inside and out. I am already at 1,500 words for this post (unless my editor breaks out a Ginsu knife). Also, publish frequently. Try …

Make sure you pick a permalink structure that fits your goals. If you have a news site, it might make sense to add the publication date of the article to the URL. Google places importance on the amount your content is shared socially, they see this as a sign that …

Sometimes, all that you need are five to 10 relevant links, from authoritative sites, to begin seeing results from Google and other search engines. How recently your webpage was published is also a ranking signal – but different types of searches have different freshness needs, such as searches for recent events …

If you perform an SEO audit now and then, you make sure your website’s up-to-date. It should be part of your frequent site maintenance cycle, I think. All search engines deliver results based on relevancy and popularity, but how they determine what’s relevant is what differentiates them from …

Google has several bots: Googlebot (desktop), Googlebot (mobile), Googlebot Video, Googlebot Images, Googlebot News. For most websites, the Googlebots for desktop and mobile are the most important bots. A natural link profile has variety. The links come from different domains and links will have different strengths. Does the content add …

Links need to actually be of interest to the reader. They must be relevant to the reader’s concerns and answer a question, provide advice, show images or do something else that is beneficial to the reader. This might sound tough, but it’s really not. If you want to …

According to Google, no-follow provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines Don't follow links on this page or Don't follow this specific link. This helps websites prevent untrusted content or paid links. Guest articles are a good way of improving your branding and getting high-quality backlinks. This area …

Real SEO is all about helping Google understand the content of your website. It’s about steering, guiding and assisting Google. Not manipulating it. 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 …

Make sure you pick a permalink structure that fits your goals. If you have a news site, it might make sense to add the publication date of the article to the URL. Search engines see millions of searches a day, and over a period of years, these data can be …

Majestic’s Trust Flow is representative of link relevancy and ‘trust’. Contextual link building -- links that are surrounded by text in the body of content -- have a higher SEO value than links that appear in the footer or sidebar. Increasingly Google is moving away from giving keywords top priority when …

There are no firm guarantees as to how quickly new sites – or pages – will be crawled by Google and then appear in the search index. Google uses your meta data to interpret what your website is about and ranks the pages accordingly. While it is important to have your keywords …

When dealing with search engines, the term ‘relevance‘ describes the extent to which the content of a website corresponds to the search term used. I’m sure you already have some assumptions regarding your target audience’s needs and problems. You also have some tips on who they are and …

Troubleshooting technical errors and ensuring that your website is always accessible is one of the biggest hurdles to manage when thinking about good SEO practices over time. Every time a search engine finds your website next to your competitors, it tells them that your company is in a related niche …

Google is also now looking at things like bounce rates – how long someone spends on your website. And it is looking at how your site renders on mobile and how quickly it loads. You can now get penalized for typos and mistakes. SEO isn’t a quick tactic that will …

If Google and the rest of the search engines trust you and they respect the content you produce, you’ll climb the search rankings. There’s no shortcut to ranking on the first few pages of the search results. Search engines don’t trust your website at first. You have …

With your core keywords grouped into buckets based on exact local monthly search volume, you will most likely notice that the longer the search query, i.e. the more words in the phrase, generally the lower the search volume. Voice Search and Mobile-First Index might drastically change that, but we …

Focus on your customers, and take the right logistical steps to make sure that search engines can find your content. Focus on the ‘road less traveled’ with long-tail opportunities, and you’ll be set. One question that often arises in regards to HTML tags and linking is whether or not …

A form of content curation is to create a resource page for a given niche. Many bloggers pursue to create the best resource page for their given niche. They do it for the organic traffic and the social media shares coming from the authors of the featured articles. It isn't …

The most important thing to know about Google Answer Boxes is that they are powered by Google Knowledge Graphs. This is a system that targets assisting users to understand useful facts on people, places, things, and relation to each other. The age of backlinks matter. Links that have existed for …

Outreach to webmasters should be personalized. You can list reasons why you like their brand, think your brand would partner well with them or citing articles and other content they published are great ways to make them more receptive. Employ keyword targeting. This is the classic ranking signal for on-page …

Technical SEO is the basic foundation of any site. While it might not have a direct relation to page/site ranking, it supports all the other components and must be done with a lot of care. Another one of the best SEO tactics creates even more links to your site …

The tactic of improving your pages to earn more traffic through being more relevant to search queries, on-page SEO is something everyone can do. Our goal is to craft a page that helps the searcher achieve their goal, answering the intent of their search. Your efforts should focus on being …

The old times when all types of backlinks were considered good for SEO are long gone. For years, many webmasters relied on sloppy techniques and used automated tools to build hundreds of backlinks every day. Things have changed a lot since then. Google very quickly recognizes if a backlink matches …

Some businesses don’t like seeing their competition rank highly in the results along with them. But this might not be such a bad thing. You have to build relevance layer by layer to exist outside the wrath of “corrective” search engine algorithms. When it comes to word count, you …

Cloaking is a method which gives search engines the impression that a website carries content that is different to what users actually see: If you provide valuable information on your website for visitors, design a good user experience, and implement all the known algorithm factors, your website has a good …

Backlinks are the fuel that drive the engine. But the actual work is done by the internal links that help visitors quickly and easily move to the content they want. The reason why most people fail to get contextual backlinks from guest posts is because they do it the wrong …

Incorporating relevance and trustworthiness into your link building strategy is an essential part of your ranking efforts. Blog comments are a great way to promote content, diversify anchor text and build out a natural link profile. Web pages containing matching verbiage will have lower visibility in searches. The ways that …

Get contextual links to your site that’ll boost your organic performance on search engines. Search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300% The biggest challenge with SEO is that it’s ambiguous territory—but you shouldn’t let the uncertainty …

True to form, Google is always changing, tweaking, and improving its algorithm. Make sure you are doing your best to have diversity in your Anchor Text when building backlinks. As far as ranking factors go, Anchor Text which had the search keyword in it tended to rank higher in Google …

High-quality content on and off your website and using strategic link-building tactics (internal links and backlinks) is a critical component to achieving relevancy. This strategy protects the website’s viability against the frequent changes in Google’s rules and priorities. SEO is a long-term strategy, so it sometimes takes months …

SEO is something that is constantly evolving and changing. Bold and italics can make your keywords stand out more with the search engines. Paid links are links garnered in exchange for payment. They can come from a network of link buyers and sellers, and a network usually consists of a …

Search engines were nothing new; the first one was Archie created back in 1990, and there had been more than a few created between then & when Google launched (most notably Yahoo!) While an exact-match domain can still rank as well as a traditional domain, they are at a higher risk …

Keep the structure, navigation and URL structure of your site simple enough for search engines to follow. Remember that search engines cannot parse your navigation if it's using flash or javascript. Importantly, Google is now looking for ways to improve its understanding of non-written words such as through videos and …

A good trick is to dig into your Google Analytics to see the top visited pages on your site. Link outreach is a bit “old school” but can still be quite powerful. Google wants the web to be 100% secure and encrypted. It means even if your website doesn't collect …

There are thousands of people out there collecting and sharing great stuff with others. There are dedicated websites for content curation where you can find these people and even suggest your content for curation. RankBrain consolidates information on user’s intent and determining the level of satisfaction on Google. By …

After implementing any SEO technique, you need to monitor your efforts. Coming up with great content is important to the longevity of any website, but finding the right “hot” keywords to use and implementing them in ways which look natural and read in a fluid fashion is just as important …

Having quality inbound links is thus, a crucial SEO technique that only increases the authority and credibility of your website. Great images compliment great website copy, and since millions of people search for images online, they play an important role in your on-page SEO. Similar to title tags, using customized …

Getting a backlink from an authoritative website will benefit you much more than a link from a lower-quality site. . If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page's …

By correctly using header tags in the following order H1, H2, H3, H4 all the way to H6 (if necessary) when inputting copy, you’re helping crawlers navigate each page of your site easily and understand its content. Heading tags are also a great way to break up the copy …

Choose three primary keywords and have a list of others to target. When you improve those keywords, choose three more. Push your content to your social media profiles by integrating it with your blog, but don’t do it in a manner that’s “me, me, me” share other things …

Most searches are short because of what economist and psychologist Herbert Simon called bounded rationality. We exert the smallest effort (short queries) to get an adequate result. We exert more effort (query refinement) only if the initial work didn’t get us what we needed. It is important to remember …

Linking to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google. The link relevancy is important and should be done in a proper manner. While backlinks in and of themselves are simple, understanding how to build backlinks the right way is not. The relevance of a website’s content is particularly …

The macro approach to keyword research is necessary for content heavy websites (and optimizing for traffic), but not ideal when doing intent-focused keyword research, as would be the case for Ecommerce, software, or other scenarios where some keyword phrases are going to carry significantly more qualification. If you are using …

Most webmasters believe Google crawls their website in one go and will continue until everything’s crawled. When optimizing sites for SEO most people concentrate on text searches, ignoring the vast number of image searches performed each day. Old-school SEO focused on keywords. New-school SEO focuses on high click-through rates …

Prevent duplicate content. Don’t confuse Google with almost similar pages. Those serve no one. Clearly define your objectives in advance so you can truly measure your ROI from any programs you implement. Onpage optimization (AKA on-page SEO) refers to all measures that can be taken directly within the website …

Google knows that if a page takes too long to load, visitors are likely to click away or go back. Now, Google tends to place other factors above site speed, but while it’s not the number one factor, if your site loads slowly it’s definitely something you will …

When optimizing sites for SEO most people concentrate on text searches, ignoring the vast number of image searches performed each day. Online shops in particular often face the risk of generating duplicate content. For example, a product might be listed in several categories. If the URL is structured hierarchically, a …

Google Analytics will be able to tell you where those converting visitors came from. And specifically, you’ll be able to see if someone who used your search term eventually ended up buying your product. Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, filenames and alt …

On powerful social media sites, the hyperlinks you include in your posts don’t get counted as a link that will help improve your backlink profile. Also, on a lot of websites, they’ll have what’s called a “no-follow” link. Obtaining Backlinks can be a tricky process that takes …