SEO Information

This site has lots of information about SEO and Search Engine optimisation in general

SEO Information

This site has lots of information about SEO and Search Engine optimisation in general

You must have a strong web foundation

Look at any forums, blogs, message boards or other chat services you might be using. In many of these environments, it is acceptable for users to give contact information and even drop links to their websites, as long as they do it in a certain way. Search engine algorithms will continue to become more sophisticated. The more webpages use the same keyword to point to a subpage, the more signals the search engine will receive indicating that this landing page must be very relevant for this keyword. This in turn means that the page will be ranked better for this and other similar keywords. By providing clear, deep, easy to find content on your website, Google is more likely to index and show your content in search results. Websites that are thin on content, showing mostly ads or affiliate links, or that otherwise redirect visitors away to other sites quickly tend not to rank well.

Broken links

Having a few 404 errors will not ruin your rankings completely, but they can lower your user experience, which ultimately can affect your SEO performance. SEO, once a highly specialized task relegated to the back rooms of a website development team, is now a mainstream marketing activity. The average top-ten ranking is two or more years old and the average age for the pages in the number one position is roughly three years old. Successful sites load fast. Even a small delay can have an impact on visitor numbers, ad views and conversions.

Don’t blindly follow every advice about website traffic you can find online

When you've selected your focus keyword, ensure it is found in your title tag, h1 tag, meta description, article text and make sure that relevant keywords are also be found throughout the content as well as h2 tags. 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. Keyword research is still useful when trying to decide on the most interesting topics for your audience. Keywords can still be part of your content, provided that they are added in context and at the right balance. There’s no need to sacrifice the quality of your content to include more keywords, as keyword stuffing can lead to the opposite of the result you want. As Google continues its journey for the perfect user experience on their own site, you have to strive to keep up.

Use SEO-Friendly URLS

After the emergence of major updates, like Panda and Penguin, search optimizers have thrown around the term “penalty” to scare SEO novices into thinking that one simple mistake could instantly tank their site’s rankings. Spend some time looking at other websites within your niche, sites that perhaps are not performing well enough to claim the top spots in Google, and ask yourself - what are they missing? Why are these sites not ranking in search engines? To achieve long-term SEO results, you must have a strong web foundation built on targeting terms related to your business, industry, and offerings. If you don’t target and rank for the right terms, your audience won’t be able to find you. So one of the most important SEO tactics is keyword research. Gaz Hall, a UK based SEO Specialist, commented: "Some SEO professionals have been predicting the demise of links for a several years. But there’s little evidence to support this trend so far."

Analysing The Data

Choosing a perfect focus keyword is not an exact science. You should aim for a combination of words that are used by a search audience. Aim for a focus keyword that is relatively high on volume and aim for one that will fit your audience. Information Architecture allows people and search engines to better understand the content structure on a site. A key lesson to apply to pretty much every aspect of SEO, is not to get carried away when you find ideas that work. For example, just because quality is key, that doesn’t mean that you need to disavow every low quality link and only ever build links from the top sites. Each time you write an informative article related to your site’s topic, you should distribute it to a number of article directories. When you do that, you are making sure that more people will be visiting your site.Look at any forums, blogs, message boards or other chat services you might be using. In many of these environments, it is acceptable for users to give contact information and even drop links to their websites, as long as they do it in a certain way. Search engine algorithms will continue to become more sophisticated. The more webpages use the same keyword to point to a subpage, the more signals the search engine will receive indicating that this landing page must be very relevant for this keyword. This in turn means that the page will be ranked better for this and other similar keywords. By providing clear, deep, easy to find content on your website, Google is more likely to index and show your content in search results. Websites that are thin on content, showing mostly ads or affiliate links, or that otherwise redirect visitors away to other sites quickly tend not to rank well.

Broken links

Having a few 404 errors will not ruin your rankings completely, but they can lower your user experience, which ultimately can affect your SEO performance. SEO, once a highly specialized task relegated to the back rooms of a website development team, is now a mainstream marketing activity. The average top-ten ranking is two or more years old and the average age for the pages in the number one position is roughly three years old. Successful sites load fast. Even a small delay can have an impact on visitor numbers, ad views and conversions.

Don’t blindly follow every advice about website traffic you can find online

When you've selected your focus keyword, ensure it is found in your title tag, h1 tag, meta description, article text and make sure that relevant keywords are also be found throughout the content as well as h2 tags. The sites that Google will rank highest for a particular search term are those that appear most relevant and have the best content and best design. At the same time, however, they are also the ones that have the most trust. Keyword research is still useful when trying to decide on the most interesting topics for your audience. Keywords can still be part of your content, provided that they are added in context and in the right balance. There's no need to sacrifice the quality of your content to include more keywords, as keyword stuffing can lead to the opposite of the result you want. As Google continues its journey for the perfect user experience on their own site, you have to strive to keep up.

Use SEO-Friendly URLS

After the emergence of major updates, like Panda and Penguin, search optimizers have thrown around the term "penalty" to scare SEO novices into thinking that one simple mistake could instantly tank their site rankings. Spend some time looking at other websites within your niche, sites that may not perform well enough to claim top spot in Google, and ask yourself - what are they missing? Why are these sites not ranking in search engines? To achieve long-term SEO results, you need to have a strong web foundation built on targeting terms related to your business, industry, and offerings. If you do not target and rank for the right terms, your audience will not be able to find you. So one of the most important SEO tactics is keyword research. Gaz Hall, a  UK based SEO Specialist, commented: "Some SEO professionals have been predicting the demise of links for a few years. But there's little evidence to support this trend so far."

Analyzing The Data

Choosing a perfect focus is not exact science. You should aim for a combination of words that are used by a search audience. Aim for a focus keyword that is relatively high on volume and aim for one that will fit your audience. Information Architecture allows  people and search engines to better understand the content structure on a site. A key lesson to apply to pretty much every aspect of SEO, is not to get carried away when you find ideas that work. For example, just because quality is key, that doesn’t mean that you need to disavow every low quality link and only ever build links from the top sites. Each time you write an informative article related to your site’s topic, you should distribute it to a number of article directories. When you do that, you are making sure that more people will be visiting your site.

More importance is given to mobile

In the search marketing field, the engines return to fulfill queries are referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). Google is increasingly understanding what the content really means, rather than just what it says You should not try to'trick 'Google. Google likes to pretend that great content and great websites will naturally acquire links. But for 99.999% of businesses, that's terrible advice. Having a mobile friendly website is an absolute must for the last couple of years. Google introduced mobile friendliness as a ranking signal in April 2015 and since then everything on the Web is about mobile.

More important is given to mobile

Think of your brand as a publisher and source of high-quality information. When you produce useful, informative content like blog posts, how-to articles, and research, you'll get in front of the searchers and earn their trust. Your website should be designed with your visitor in mind. Nobody wants to wait a long time for a page to load, and slow site speeds will tempt visitors to visit a competitor's page. A site can never have enough content. There is always an opportunity to create new pieces of content, and content is also one of the Google ranking signals. As much as it's important to try out new things and experiment with SEO, one thing remains constant - the importance of title and meta tags.

How often do you update your content?

If a site or specific page has a lot of backlinks pointing to it, Google then sees this page or site as credible. This is true, though, if those backlinks are coming from quality, reputable sources, and it's even better when those sites are relevant to your site. If you're worried about the effectiveness of SEO, it's safe to assume you do not have much technical experience with website development or programming - and that the technical SEO prospect intimidates you. Long-format articles in excess of 1000 words are the recipe for getting the search engines to see your content as something trustworthy. If an SEO tactic worked for one website that does not mean the same can be successfully applied to another.

Action Plan

If you are not seeing a positive ROI after a month or two, try changing tactics and / or improve your methods until you start seeing a positive momentum. The link structure of the Web serves to bind together all the pages that have been made public as a result of someone linking to them. Through links, search engines' automated robots, called crawlers or spiders, can reach many billions of interconnected documents. Determining the unique content on a page is an important part of what the search engine does. It is this understanding of the unique content on a page that the search engine uses to determine the types of search queries for which the web page may be relevant. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, I had the following to say: "Research other business websites and encourage them to link to your site. Joint ventures are a good way to exchange links and benefit each other's business as well."

Learn more about your audience

Copywriters with search engine optimization (SEO) expertise can craft reader-friendly content that still follows a formula proven to increase website traffic. Integrated selected keywords into your website source code and existing content on designated pages. Using your keyword in the headline can also be a good idea, but do not try too hard to include it. Use power words and avoid redundancy to create a clear and appealing result. Aim for a headline of 55-60 characters, as this is what Google will display on the SERP. When you are trying to get more links you need to think about quality, not all links are created equal and links from low quality sites will have little or no impact on your rankings.
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Canonicalising URLs and SEO

Canonicalizing URLs is a very important aspect of Search Engine Optimization but also of Social Media Marketing. Adding endless pages ofirrelevant content to your website won’t increase traffic. In fact, you’re actually erecting a STOP sign. The content that you publish needs to be relevant. Help people by providing valuable information. After all, isn’t your business trying to solve people’s problems, not create them? Quality content wins. Bad content, and a lot of it, will not help you. Does the website that is linking back to your website relate to your business? Make sure there is a strong relevance when acquiring backlinks. The key to quality SEO is all about research research research.

What promise do you make?

Many business owners create a website and find that they are receiving international inquiries about their services, or receiving orders from other countries. Although they expected their market would be local, or at best national. Without considering a search engine user's intent, you will attract too much unqualified traffic. Cramming popular search terms into your blog isn’t enough anymore, businesses need to spend time creating meaningful copy. You should definitely be using canonical URLs with keywords and a relevant directory structure that also includes keywords. You should also avoid using too many page variables after the URL.

Establish intuitive information architecture

Browse your own site for a while and try to click on every button, image and link to see what happens. Is everything working as expected? Although word count doesn’t rule the SEO world – nobody will read your stuff if it’s not helpful to them. As brands across industries continue to see the impact that organic search can have on their growth, search engine optimization has come from humble beginnings to become a recognized strategic field of marketing. Webpages on HTTPS had positive correlation with higher rankings.

Main keywords and sub-keywords

What Google wants to see is authoritative and relatable links talking about your site. Even a few changes will have a significant impact on your website's ranking. Do not forget - it will take time to see your hard work come to fruition! Be careful not to include links within the content that lead directly to the desktop or mobile version of a page. Even if the user is switched to the correct URL based on their device, Google sees these types of links as bad user experience. According to Gaz Hall, a  UK SEO Consultant  : "You can stop improving certain pages, but the site as a whole can always be improved."

Age of the domain name

First, stop assuming SEO is dead because the rules have changed. How bad hosting  can  lead to loss of SEO rankings Downtime of your website can lead to significantly reduced performance in organic search. In addition to storing the content of each page, Google also stores how its crawlers arrived on the page. In other words, it remembers the pages and websites that were linking to it. A link from one site to another is like a vote or endorsement for the credibility of the second website. Developers who are not already focused on SEO requirements are not necessarily keeping up with these changes, which will challenge brands and open up additional opportunities for developers with updated SEO knowledge and skills.

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Determining the goal for the site

Google wants to see a healthy link profile that signifies authority. This means quality links coming from quality content across the web with a healthy diversity. Google doesn’t only consider on-page SEO score when ranking an article. It also takes into account many other factors like social media signals (shares, likes, tweets, follows, etc.), backlinks, domain authority, and many other off-page metrics. Keywords are less often used nowadays as the first signal to indicate what your post is about, but they are still helpful to offer an overview of the topic you’re focusing on. Whenever possible, avoid changing URL structures. The easiest way to prevent broken redirects is to avoid creating the redirects in the first place.

Are Keywords – and Keyword Research – Dead?

The meta description is not a ranking factor, but it does play an important part in optimizing your Click Through Rate (CTR). Use an online tool to help you come up with more keyword and topic ideas, based on some of your preliminary ideas. Using bucket brigades is one great SEO strategy to increase user experience, according to Backlinko. These are simply words and phrases that keep people engaged. Backlinks from relevant sites in your niche will be worth significantly more than ones from irrelevant sites or webpages. Some people believe that links from competitors for the same search position as you are worth more than others too.

Empty content pages which exist simply to link to other pages

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. If you tried to optimize an article for a certain keyword, but it’s getting more traffic for a different variation of that keyword, then go back in and re-optimize it for the new keyword. After choosing a domain name, optimizing the URLs for your pages is the next SEO step. SEO for your page URLs is important because keywords in the URL are a ranking factor and short and descriptive URLs can help with link building and user interaction. Like your visitors, search engines read a URL to get a clue for the contents of the page. Although the top-level domain isn’t necessarily considered a factor, some people believe obtaining a link from .edu or .gov domains can carry more weight than others. This may be because these sorts of websites have high authority anyway.

If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist

Digital marketing professionals understand the importance of SEO and the need to implement a proper strategy. However, only defining what those keywords are isn’t enough to improve your website’s search engine ranking. When they are indexing websites, the search engines’ bots scan every one of a site’s URLs and look for the starting points of the topics that are covered. They also browse the HTML code for metadata such as particular tags or markups, so that they can determine the relevance of individual pages to particular subjects. A page that doesn’t meet the needs and expectations of users will never achieve strong user signals. Because it’s not answering the right questions or providing the right information, users will quickly abandon your page in search of a more useful one. We asked an SEO Specialist, Gaz Hall, for his thoughts on the matter: "In the past, creating keyword rich anchor text used to be considered an effective strategy as long as they were on relevant sites. However, those days are long gone! Now, any keyword rich anchor text that you create on your own goes against Google’s guidelines."

Determining the goal for the site

Links from and to an article help boost its ranking. When you submit, check the ways you can enrich your article; linking to different websites and databases is always a good idea. Google is getting better every day at recognizing—and rewarding—high-quality content. As defined by Google and humans, valuable content is useful, informative, better than other content on the same topic, credible, original, and engaging. Keyword research is the process SEOs use to find what search queries consumers enter into a search engine for a given topic. You will find that there are a number of different ways to do keyword research, but there is no single “right” way. It will vary based on your industry, budget, and goals. Backlinks are commonly referred to as one of the top factors Google uses in deciding what sites to show in a search result.

Auditing an Existing Site to Identify SEO Problems

You need a clear strategy on your most profitable keywords. You also need to determine whether you need a strong focus on your local market or if you should be targeting keywords nationally. Write proper page titles. Not overly optimized titles targeting a gazillion keywords. No. Proper, one sentence titles that contain your brand name and your focus keyword. Once you create your blog, stick to the same domain for as long as you continue to publish. You could end up losing a lot of your organic traffic, your readers and all your search engine listings if you decide to move or change your domain and URLs. Search engine algorithms will continue to become more sophisticated.

What is duplicate content?

The featured snippets that SEOs have been striving to get are a prime example of how voice search has changed SEO. Optimizing for these snippets requires old school SEO tactics combined with something new. Using bucket brigades is one great SEO strategy to increase user experience, according to Backlinko. These are simply words and phrases that keep people engaged. Google wants to see that you have a legitimate site with legitimate traffic. This means your content needs to be stellar. Positive reviews are an important local SEO ranking factor that improves your business visibility on Google.

Quality over Quantity

Understanding how search engines work is an important component of SEO. The search engines are constantly tuning their algorithms It’s important to keep in mind that if search engine traffic is your only goal, your results will probably suffer. Whether or not a website gets to top ranking positions depends on how unique its content is and how much added value it provides users. The backlinks you want pointing to your site are natural, authentic, industry-related and authoritative.

Thin content issues might negatively impact SERP visibility

Search engine optimization is a strategy that is fairly easy to implement for most company websites - provided you have a current set of SEO ranking factors and effectively implement changes. SEO is something that is constantly evolving and changing. Quality will win over quantity every time and your results will not be nearly as fruitful if you're posting mediocre content. Gaz Hall, a  UK based SEO Specialist , commented: "The focus on the right audience and the right content brings an understanding of the content that they are more likely to consume."

Auditing an Existing Site to Identify SEO Problems

Google has devoted a lot of time to preventing people from using links to manipulate their algorithms in order to get higher SERPs. There is no  single place to focus when trying to optimize a website for search engines, so it is important to make updates and upgrades to various parts of a website on a regular basis, not spending too much time or effort on any particular web site while other features get ignored or underserved. It's not just about creating quality content, but also about knowing your audience, to the extent that the content is useful and has more chances to be ranked higher in the search results for relevant queries. An early part of the SEO brainstorming process is identifying the great places to get links, as well as the types of content you might want to develop to encourage linking from other quality websites.