Try, test, repeat

Links increase the authority and trustworthiness of a page to search engines, which increases the overall authority of that website. Today, the secret to SEO is no secret at all. It's common sense. Brands that rank high on search engines have great content, address their target audience's search intent, and take the time to optimize their sites from a technology standpoint. Make sure content is not buried inside rich media (Adobe Flash Player, JavaScript, Ajax) and verify that rich media doesn't hide links from crawlers. An HTML sitemap (as opposed to an XML sitemap) is often mentioned as being useful for SEO. They certainly are if you use them wisely (and especially Bing seems to like them at times), but I like them even more for the fact that users like them a lot. Is the page load time excessive? Too long a load time may slow down crawling and indexing of the site.

Understand the different hosting options available

The following are the two most important things you need to ensure: that (1) your page loads quickly (under 2 seconds) and (2) your page is as small as possible with the least number of requests. Familiarize your content creators with basic SEO practices and ensure they work closely with the SEO team to create material that will rank as highly as possible from the moment of publication. From a usability point of view, it makes sense to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly as over 56% of all traffic now comes from mobile devices. This means that if you want to keep those users engaged then you need a mobile-friendly website. Linking out is huge. Don't be a link hoard; you're going to create content, so use it to gain favor with other people. I'll go more into depth below with specific tactics on linking out, but in general, you only have something to gain when you’re linking out. Mobile SEO is – just like regular SEO – all about making sure your site is crawlable and findable. Also, you need stellar performance, great content and a flawless UX.

Proper HTML and CSS Validation

The best way to build links is to not build links. I’ve worked for companies in the past that don’t have to ask for them, they just flow in from press, customer blogs, their awesome blog posts, etc. If this is an option (and we’ll go over a couple of ways to make it more likely) you’re in a great place. Sitelinks can be a little bit of a double-edged sword: even if you can get Google to display them, they might not necessarily be the links you would have chosen to display. If an SEO tactic worked for one website that does not mean the same can be successfully applied to another. SEO in Howden is here. By properly using HTML tags, on-page linking, and internal backlinking, you can streamline your site to best serve your customers. By creating relevant content that guides users through the marketing funnel, you can improve sales and generate more interest in your brand. If you execute your keyword research properly, you’ll end up with a long list of search terms you want to be found for. Make sure to search for those terms in Google yourself. What results are there already? Who will be your online competitors for these search terms? What can you do to stand out from these results?

Build backlinks

According to Gaz Hall, a UK SEO Consultant : "Keyword density (SEO) is the percentage (%) of times a keyword or key phrase appears on a web page in comparison with the total number of words on the page." As you create content for your website, link to other pages on your site within your content. Use anchor text that uses the page’s target keywords or phrases that explain what the page is about. “Link building” is a term that SEO practitioners use to describe the process of building credibility. The idea is simple: people link to your website when they perceive your brand as a source of authority. Follow links are links that Google bots and humans can follow. The bot reaches the links and then continues onto the next page, bringing some value from the source site. In most cases, it's not the technical issues themselves that are hurting your SEO efforts, but the results that are caused by the errors they create.

Is your content marketing strategy consistent with your traffic and conversion goal?

White Hat SEO – These are SEO techniques that conform to Google search engine guidelines and will not result in your website being de-ranked during a future Google update or if they perform a manual review of your website. Is your website available in different languages or country versions? Awesome! Don’t forget to notify search engines of this. The search engines will then display the content of your website in the respective country and language versions for users. This improves usability since users are immediately redirected to the desired version in the SERPs. Monitoring tools are a huge part of ensuring only quality links are connected to your site, and give you an easy way to remove any negative or potentially harmful ones. In an SEO scenario, Google likes to trust sites that have links from high quality, relevant sources. For example, large news websites don’t generally link to an untrusted source, nor do top quality industry blogs or university or .edu websites. Whether we like it or not, SEO isn’t simply “plug n’ play”, and it won’t automatically look after itself. You’d be surprised, however, at the ROI you can achieve with a few hours of focused outreach every month.

Aim to be in the top 3 positions, not just in the first page

Finding that people from an unexpected search term are converting more highly than those from other search terms? Then it might be time to switch gear and start trying to rank for that phrase instead! Search engines also assess, in great detail, the technical aspects of your website. For example, how quickly the site loads plays a major role in your website ranking. Search engines also take into account how accessible your server is. Because, ultimately, Google and other search engines want to provide the best possible search results. So, the aim is to guide visitors to sites which work well, and which can always be accessed and used. Trustworthy sites tend to link to other trusted sites, while spammy sites receive very few links from trusted sources. User signals are behavioral patterns of users which Google uses to establish the rankings of your website in the search results. For instance: users click on a result in the search engines and after that, they immediately bounce back to Google. This is a signal that the website does not fit the search query of the user. Analysis of meta sets/keywords, visible text and code to deter­mine how well you're positioned for search engines.