Understanding the rationale behind XML sitemaps

The structure of your URLs can also help search engines to better understand your website content. If you can alter the URL so that, for example, it includes the name of your website, you should make use of this. 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. Websites with fresh content added on a regular basis are given more authority, and rank higher in the search results. Fresh content tells Google you are maintaining your website. Include the right rich snippets, don’t add schema.org markup just to inform Google about all the other stuff you do.

Manual temporary redirects may not affect your rankings as severely as other on-page issues

SEO is something that is constantly evolving and changing. 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 group of low-quality sites that collectively link to a specific website in an effort to increase it’s authority in SERPs. Other times, there may be a reciprocal linking program, where a group of websites link to one another. You don't want to just attract people to your site, you want them to take the next steps towards becoming a customer. Your website needs to be compelling and be set up for maximum conversions. Directory Submission is important to Search Engine Optimization, especially for younger websites that don’t have links built all over the Internet already. It is an easy and free part of the Search Engine Optimization process which many novice webmasters ignore. If you want your website to succeed, don’t forget those directories.

Optimize images with your key term

Google recognizes that a site might have two versions on the same page (web version and printer friendly version), and this duplicate content is actually meant to make for a better user-experience, and not trick the search engines. At the end of the day, Google makes decisions based on the number of links pointing to your pages and the circumstances surrounding such links. The basic premise is that a page will show up in search engine results because the website had mentioned the terms that were being searched for on the website page. Of course, many websites use the same keywords on the same page. Content strategy and execution is a discipline in its own right. If you are looking to build a genuinely compelling brand experience shortcuts cannot be taken.

Monitor the evolution of your Google rankings

Dramatic growth in the interaction between offline and online marketing necessitates investment by organizations of all kinds in a successful search strategy. 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 NEW content for their blog (don’t just copy and paste something already existing on your blog). Remember to include a couple links within your post linking back to your site, using anchor text with your relevant keywords. Stop words are the small words in your SEO phrase, such as up, with, is, a, etc. While it’s widely accepted as a best practice to remove these from your SEO phrase, sometimes removing them can actually hurt your SEO. For example, “What is a graco taco?” makes a lot more sense than “what graco taco.” So while many SEO plugins and search experts will advise you to remove stop words, sometimes it’s best to leave them in if they drastically impact the meaning of the phrase. Be your own judge. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Technical SEO is an often misunderstood discipline that many find difficult to pin down in exact terms."