The bad news about SEO is that it’s not as simple as flicking a couple of switches. Nor is it a one-time deal; SEO has to be a consistent part of your ongoing marketing. There is also an overwhelming amount of information available online – how do you know where …

By incorporating backlinks to reputable sources and optimizing your internal links, you can quickly raise your website’s domain authority from the teens to the forties or so. SEO offers incredible opportunity and access (it's an inherently free marketing channel) to inbound traffic, but it can be hard to know …

When you are creating text, keep in mind that web users want to get information quickly. So, express yourself in as much detail as necessary, but as succinctly as possible. For example, avoid long, nested phrases and break up your texts with short paragraphs, bullet points, headings, and images. Nofollow …

If your website is trying to rank quickly for a specific topic, and yet there is not a piece of high-value content that addresses that topic, the probability of showing up in the Google search results is small. Whether or not a website gets to top ranking positions depends on …

The more popular and important a site is, the more links from that site matter. A site like Wikipedia has thousands of diverse sites linking to it, which means it's probably a popular and important site. One of the best ways to captivate and ensure visitors come to your new …

Google’s robots, or “spiders,” crawl the Internet by “clicking” one link after another after another. They discover new pages and websites as part of that crawl, and store the content of each of those pages in a giant database. Placing ads in front of potential customers has traditionally been …

Would you rather read 5 articles about one subject, or one or two well thought articles with significant amounts of data or thought process to back them up? Ensure the number of new site visitors arriving via organic search is growing, month to month and year over year. Since search …

Search drives the web -- roughly two-thirds of website visitors originate from organic search. You’ve got to understand that authority, niche-specific and generic blogs that publish related content can do the same. Community hijacking involves finding online communities that are made up of your target market, or people that can …

Whether you are a fresh-faced SEO newbie just starting to learn the ropes, or an SEO veteran who can recite the ins and outs of every Google update ever, SEO is a complex subject. Google has reduced the importance of keyword phrases and now places more importance on a variety …

Always keep the restrictions of the small screen in mind when creating or editing content. Don’t use too many long sentences, keep your paragraphs around four sentences and use many stops like lists and headings to break up your text. Building links is certainly an essential SEO practice, but …

Search engines have made it clear: a vitally important part of the future of search is “rich results.” The type of content you use on a page also matters for indexing. For example, images are indexed differently from text. It is customary to ensure that meaningful images are assigned descriptive …

Term weighting refers to the importance of a particular search term to the query. The idea is to weight particular terms more heavily than others to produce superior search results. Google has made it apparent that site speed matter in search rankings, and today, with a bigger emphasis on the …

If you want to promote your website by purchasing sponsored links, always use the rel nofollow attribute. There’s no other way. If Google finds that you’ve paid webmasters to build backlinks, you will end up with a hard to remove penalty. Building backlinks is not enough. You also …

Yes, "content is king" – but that's only half the story. Imagine if Wikipedia, one of the world's most popular sites, offered no more than huge blocks of text, or if Google cluttered its search interface with distracting graphics. It's unlikely that either site would have become as successful as they …

You want people to subscribe to your blog by providing you an email address. You can then market to them with your newer blog posts, content offers or sales. Just make sure not to spam them; no one wants to receive an email every day pushing a purchase. If you …

Search engines optimize their results pages — especially their mobile search results pages — to display businesses that are located near the searcher. This is a good thing for local businesses because local online searches lead to visitors and purchases. If possible, choose a domain name which includes your local area, and …

The benefits of guest blogging are endless and often underrated. By tapping into already established communities, you can increase your reputation, build high-quality backlinks, get more exposure to your website and much more. If your site doesn't load properly on mobile platforms, then you're wasting your time with SEO. You …

Keep your sentences short. Make sure that no more than 25% of your sentences contain more than 20 words. Also, keep your paragraphs short. Make sure each paragraph doesn’t exceed the recommended maximum of 150 words. To offer the best possible results, search engines must attempt to discover all …

When optimizing for search traffic today, marketers can’t think just about rankings. They need to be holistic in their approach to the visibility and appearance of listings. Google is pushing towards more and more personalized search results, so in order for you to perform well, you’ll have to …

Search drives the web -- roughly two-thirds of website visitors originate from organic search. Google is looking for authoritative sites that are actual businesses that are getting legitimate visitors to their site. Focus on producing content on your site that educates and engages your prospective customers so they keep coming back …

CTR gives some insight into how likely potential visitors are to actually click on your site in the SERPs. By regularly auditing your – or your client’s – sites, you can get a good feel for what you still need to do to improve SEO. Cramming popular search terms into your …