Don’t forget to tell Google your site is mobile-proof. You can add a viewport declaration – if you’re using responsive design – or a Vary header when using dynamic serving. If you own or control the content of all the sites displaying the same duplicate content, then you should either …

If you're anything like me, then you're looking to understand why certain things work the way they do. Google needs to know what your content is about in order to place it in the right SERPs for the right search terms. Realize that meta keywords are only used by your …

Within the space of 3 years, it has become significantly easier to find businesses, stores or items nearby, creating a shift in user’s intent and search behavior. Users no longer have to include their location in search queries, such as inputting “coffee shops in Queens” into Google. Write about …

If you are really interested in improving your SEO, a strategy needs to be formulated. An SEO expert will need to identify the services or products that drive the most revenue for your business so he can deploy an SEO strategy based on your actual business model. Companies of every …

Mobile content should be short, useful, interesting, and easy to navigate. Build a list of other niche blogs in your field. Start commenting on their blogs with insightful comments, and then reach out to them and ask if you can write one guest post for them. If they accept, write …

This can have a devastating effect on bounce rate. Don’t rely on the tips you read from unknown sources. If somebody discovers the secret to rank first on Google for competitive keywords, it’s very unlikely that they will share it with strangers. When people have questions, they type …

The focus on the right audience and the right content brings an understanding of the content that they’re more likely to consume. Contrary to popular belief, linking out to relevant external websites does not directly impact your search rankings. Make it as easy as possible for users to go …

Technical search engine optimization consists of making various internal changes to a website to make it more visible in search engines. More visibility means more credibility and better positioning in search engine results pages. Done properly, SEO brings more targeted traffic to your website. What SMEs haven’t realised yet …

As of now, less than 50 percent of websites use local schema markup for local SEO, so there's tremendous advantage to be enjoyed by adopting it. The new SEO paradigm is defined by creating good content and site architecture, along with messaging, branding, and communication with the audience. Voice search …

The backlink is one of the strongest ranking signals for any site because they indicate its authority. 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 …

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 at regular intervals, not spending too much time or effort on any particular aspect of the website while other …

All your citations (an online reference to your business including your NAP) need to be consistent, so as you start building them (see below), make sure that firstly, your NAP is correct, and the same (so Google & Bing can see the connection). Make sure you pick a permalink structure that …

The age of backlinks matter. Links that have existed for a long time weigh more heavily in your website’s link graph. Having links from more popular websites carry more weight than less popular sites. As we know that Google optimizes its results for user intent, hence, this is a …

There is no minimum amount of words or text to rank in Google. Make it clear on your own Web site that you want links - ask for them directly and make it easy for people to link by writing the linking code for them (using keyword phrases in linking text …

A picture can be worth a thousand words, they say. Well, when it comes to online marketing, a single image can be worth a thousand links! You’re ultimately looking to rank for keywords that will bring value to your business (i.e., those bringing traffic that will convert into …

Most people can make a short (or long) list of keywords that might be used to find their own site. But ask other people these questions and write down their keyword suggestions, too. Doing so will help you go beyond the jargon words that only you and insiders know. On …

A lot of people think of link reclamation as just 301’ing pages they have moved that still have a lot of great backlinks. 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 …

Link to page relevance is if the link is relevant on the page; that is to say if the link makes contextual sense on the page itself. As you know, back in the day we could build 10,000 forum profile links with exact match anchor text and rank in …

Appropriate use of headers are not only helpful to the reader in structuring and breaking up content, but they also let Google know what the key information on that page is and what is most important. The reason that most SEOs don’t know technical SEO is because they don …

The backlinks you want pointing to your site are natural, authentic, industry-related and authoritative. As Google continues to prioritize the user experience in its algorithm, this data can become critical. It’s one thing to provide a list of items that generally lead to a better user experience (like we …

It does not matter if you are running an e-commerce store or a business blog, content marketing remains an important part of modern-day SEO processes. The Internet is all about trends — what works phenomenally well to improve SEO one year, might fall flat the next. SEO isn’t a one-and-done …

Backlinks are a vote of confidence that someone outside of your own web property trusts your content and believes it has value. Google weighs up each of these links and assigns the linked-to webpage its own value. Local businesses can’t be fully evaluated on the basis of links. Things …

Pick your permalink structure wisely. Don’t change your permalink structure for the sake of it. Incorrectly redirecting your old URLs to the new URLs might lead to problems and could get you dropped from the rankings. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile. When someone is searching for …

To a larger degree, your backlink profile is made up of backlinks from external sites (also known as referring domains) that contribute to the overall strength, relevance and diversity of your domain’s backlink profile. Don’t try to act smart. There are some plugins which allows you to add …

When you're ready to scale your strategy, consider hiring a professional SEO agency or a highly skilled independent contractor. To understand your website, Google must be able to read it. In order for this to be possible, you must make sure that your website is text based behind the scenes …

Long form content is an inbound marketing strategy that is being used by organizations in many different industries. In order to take advantage of long form content in your organization’s marketing, consider adding these tips and ideas to your strategy. Google and the other search engines use image-recognition software …

Google does not work only the way it used to work, and as a result, this impacts a lotof websites built a certain way to rank high in Google. Dig through your customer communications to find additional, actively used keywords. Talk to your customer service people to find out what …

Buying backlinks can and does work, however, there’s a substantial risk involved if you buy low quality ones and/or from people who openly sell them. If their website gets penalised, you’re in trouble too. Alt attributes are the text alternatives to your image which will appear if …

When SEO isn’t done right it can be the cause of wasted time, money and a lot of frustration for many businesses. They might be ranking well for some keywords, but those keywords aren’t actually bringing in qualified traffic, leads or buyers. A mobile strategy is not simply …

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. Keyword Research …

Build a unique contact page for each location that you operate and mark up your location information in Schema.org. Use an online tool to help you come up with more keyword and topic ideas, based on some of your preliminary ideas. The activity generated by social media suggests that …

Your page title should be naturally descriptive and contain the right keywords. Most SEOs place this near the top in terms of ranking power. It's also important to ensure the title is catchy because this tag is what Google often shows in the search results. This means make it click-worthy …

Some sites have the same URL for both desktop and mobile content, but change their format according to User-agent. In other words, both mobile users and desktop users access the same URL (i.e. no redirects), but the content/format changes slightly according to the User-agent. Getting the technical details …

Once the Search Engines crawls the web and comes across the new pages, it then indexes or stores the information in its giant database categorically, to be retrieved later when any search query related to it comes up. These giant database storage facilities is capable of processing large amount of …

The driver of any heavy-duty link campaign is the quality and volume of your content. If your content is of average quality and covers the same information dozens of other sites have covered, it will not attract many links Faked and manipulated website content (even backlinks) can actually harm a …

Vertical search is the term people sometimes use for specialty or niche search engines that focus on a limited data set. Examples of vertical search solutions provided by the major search engines are image, video, news, and blog searches Don’t use hidden text or links on your website to …

You can’t master SEO in a day, but you can resolve to make small steps in each of the areas of SEO that will make your site better and your efforts more impactful. Think of yourself as an asset portfolio manager, because that’s what you are. In the …

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination. Instead of creating content, a lot of websites should …

Google has placed an increased onus on trust in recent times. If Google trusts your site, it means your site is more resilient and also tends to ranks better. It’s not enough these days to create a website then sit back and wait for your customers to find it …

Artificial intelligence will become more ubiquitous, so SEO specialists must grasp firsthand knowledge on machine learning and automation. Does having keywords in your domain URL benefit your search ranking? This topic has often been debated up and down the years. The consensus is that they are a ranking factor, albeit …