The web is the new Yellow Pages

First and foremost, the content on your website must be well-written, free of grammatical errors, and 100% unique and original. Content must read smoothly and give visitors the information they are searching for. To gain visibility across search engines (think 'universal' or blended search), as well as relevant blogs, forums, online media and social networks, whilst being compelling enough, where relevant, to be shared by the target audience. Metadata is what appears on search engine result pages (SERPs) when a website comes up for certain queries. It includes the title of the page and its meta description. Many people fixate on "on-page SEO" in their marketing efforts. They make sure their keywords are jammed in the copy and the internal links and silos are set up correctly. For a typical WordPress site this might take an hour or two to knock out the easy stuff. When it comes to getting your website ranked highly then keywords are still an essential part of Google’s ranking algorithm, they are the very backbone of search engine (even Yahoo) after all. But keywords aren’t what they might always appear to be.

Link reclamation

You don't need to write at a doctorate level to rank at the top of Google. You simply need to write at a higher reading level than normal. 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. Mobile SEO should always be a work in progress because there are always new things to improve. Also, technologies arrive or get discarded. Your content can target any audience, but if it doesn’t sufficiently deliver the information that audience is seeking, you’re out of luck. 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.

The title should be true to the content found on the page

Internal backlinks connect different assets — including content, product pages, or other information — together. Naturally, external backlinks will lead to increased brand exposure and sales. The cornerstone of a successful organic search campaign has always been technical SEO. 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. Most SEO consultants are looking to build backlinks. If you’re not blessed with excellent writing skills, outsource this job to somebody who is. With 75 percent of companies currently increasing their content marketing budget, it’s apparent that content can no longer be treated as a part-time job. Outsourcing content creation to dedicated writers allows for consistent, high quality publishing, fresh perspectives, insight into best practices and better leveraging of resources. 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 type deal. It requires constant updating, tweaking, experimenting and testing. And with SEO being one of the highest returning investments you’ll make for your website, you’ll want to constantly measure its success to maintain powerful results.

Structure of headings for your category / tag / taxonomy pages

Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Links on your page maybe internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about." You’ve created a website and published it on the web, but now you’re probably wondering how people — the right people, those who’ll be interested in who you are and what you do — will find you. You’ve heard about search engine optimization, or SEO, but don’t have the first clue how it works. Top-ranking webpages in Google have shorter URLs. You have pages and posts on your website, so make the most of them. Internal links are HUGE for link building because you can control everything about them, from the location on the page to the anchor text. While many old-school SEOs believe that link building techniques are now largely ineffective (or at least less effective than they once were), links are still critical to getting high rankings.

Use Google’s features and follow guidelines to avoid penalties

Satisfy your users’ intent. Give them the information they seek! Perhaps they are searching for formal wear. So, you are trying to rank for those things, tuxedos and formal dresses or wedding outfits, which are tough to rank for. A Google research recently revealed that four out of five users trust search engines for local searches Focus on building trust as opposed to trying to bend and break the rules. That way, you rise above Google's often-changing rules which are getting better and better at finding people who are looking for shortcuts. There are other things that you can do to get contextual links, such as guest bloggingand mentioning other sites in your content (and letting them know about it). Wouldn’t it be cool if you could find out exactly which keywords your competitors are ranking for AND how much search traffic those keywords are bringing in?

Keyword ideas for traffic potential

Search engines scan tags and categories to identify what products, blog posts, or gallery images are about. Adding tags and categories that accurately describe the item could help it appear in search results. SEO doesn’t have to be hard or require an expert team to get results. If you’ve got a process and a structure, you can rank your content in search engines quite quickly. Make sure that your code is valid, in some instances bad code can lead to search engines not being able to properly read a page. Use the W3C validator to check your markup. If possible, choose a domain name which includes your local area, and structure URLs to include relevant geographical terms where possible. Create content which talks about your local area, but be sure to make it engaging and relevant to provide a good user experience. Include your business NAP (name, address and phone number) on every page of your website – not just your home page or contact page. Old-school SEO focused on keywords. New-school SEO focuses on high click-through rates, “long clicks”, freshness, and amplification...which are all signals that users are successfully finding the answers they’re looking for in your content.