Linking out to relevant external websites does not directly impact your search rankings

In today’s rapidly shifting world, SEO techniques can change on a dime—and the worst part is that you might not even know it. Hacks that could have won you a front-page result last year are not only obsolete now, but they may even hurt your website’s rankings. The key is creating content ready to serve customers across various devices and platforms. Brands need to meet customers where they are in order to provide them information; but without data, this is impossible. Data can let brands know what their customers search for and what they want to see when they make these queries. In the eyes of Google, you’ll earn a higher authority by having a better-functioning site, such as one that’s optimized for mobile devices, loads quickly, and has an optimized internal navigation structure. If you want to simply attract users, focus more on SEO tactics that drive visitors to your site. If you want higher conversion rates once visitors get to your site, content marketing is more important.

You want to define yourself so that your prospects know what to expect

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of designing web pages, writing content and building a network of links back to your website in order to rank at the top of a google search results page. The goal is to bring your page in front of your target market. This kind of search traffic is known as 'organic' and it is the most desirable google traffic because it's FREE! (well unless you are paying a blog content writer!) People spend very little time engaging with content. Website crawl-ability and making a website searchable goes beyond making sure Google can “crawl” the website. Understanding how a website’s users (including Google) are navigating a website is key to building an information architecture. Building the information architecture in a way that mirrors their thought processes will help both user types discover information on a website. I spent years and years focusing on doing nothing but building backlinks. The social hit and I had to change my focus. Now links are back as number #1 again, but honestly, did they ever really stop being the top factor?

Set a bare minimum expectation for what SEO can achieve

In the early days of SEO, you could get a site to rank fairly easily by buying a bunch of low-quality backlinks, keyword stuffing (including the same keyword on a page a bunch of times), or by buying a domain address (website name) that exactly matched the keyword you wanted to rank for. Google continues to use natural, quality inbound links as a main ranking factor. Write legible, readable copy, and treat the meta description as if it’s an advert for your web-page To understand SEO, you need to understand search engines. A search engine is a piece of software that crawls the internet and indexes its pages in order to provide the best website recommendations based on a user's search query. And they use complex, ever-changing algorithms to do that.

Join Facebook groups based around your lead generation vertical

Cramming popular search terms into your blog isn’t enough anymore, businesses need to spend time creating meaningful copy. Keyword research can turn into a useful ally, especially if you bear in mind that you don’t always need to target the most obvious keywords. Internal page linking is an important part of on page SEO. These can be interpreted as binding your website together. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Opening paragraphs shouldn’t be longer than one or two sentences. Make sure the thing you’re writing about is mentioned in the first sentence (i.e. your focus keyword or phrase). I like to bold the first paragraph to make it distinct."