I highly recommend starting off with building out resources their target audience would care about, want to share on social media, and want to link to. The entire mentality of a search engine is to provide the best possible result to the searcher that satisfies their original search query. They do this by evaluating a site’s content in reference to the search and the quality of the site and its content. Well, ours is an imperfect world, and, as you might have heard, some self-proclaimed SEO “experts” scheme to trick search engines and inflate their rankings using black-hat, unethical methods, and in the times before the nofollow attribute, link-building was an easy way to artificially boost page rankings. Get specific by taking a structured approach. It’s not enough to focus on the right keyword—you need to make sure that you’re communicating the ‘right’ information to Google in a structured way.

We're searching in different ways today

SEO marketers find that negative SEO attacks are becoming more prevalent as they continue working on a strategy. Yes, competitors might try to penalize your website and get your website removed from Google. Make sure you have clean, short, descriptive URLs. Descriptive means keyword-rich but not keyword-stuffed. If you want to generate traffic through search, it’s best to do keyword research before you start writing. This way, you can focus on keywords for which a certain amount of search volume already exists – in other words, write toward topics that people are already searching for information about. Creating infographics that give detailed information about your niche is another great way to build links. People using your infographics will be required to place a link to your site (where they obtained the infographic), thus giving you an easy backlink from a site relevant to your niche.

Promote your content via social media (and beyond

A more technical topic, most sites can review and optimise their URLs, especially when creating new pages. Making URLs short, readable and keyword-subject-rich is a simple way to make the most of them. Another tip for making long form content appealing is giving people something to read that surprises them. Whether you choose to share a shocking statistic or a little-known fact, information that grabs people’s attention will make people more likely to read the rest of your content. The key to implementing this strategy is to find something interesting that people aren’t aware of and then center your piece around that idea or information. The sites that Google will rank highest for a particular search term are the ones that appear the most relevant and that have the best content and best design. At the same time though, they will also be the ones that have the most trust. Research proves the importance of gaining a presence on the first three pages returned by the search engines. Being on the first page of the search engine results page (SERPS) should always be the target.

Higher Search Engine Rankings

If your page title is too long (currently 400 to 600 pixels), it will get cut off in Google. You don’t want potential visitors to be unable to read the full title in the SERPs. Organic SEO is a lengthy process. Not because it’s complicated to implement (though it can be), but because tracking what works versus what doesn’t requires a least a few months’ worth of results to analyze. Plus, you need numbers! Traffic. It’s tough to track what’s working if you don’t have a consistent flow of online visitors leaving digital footprints for you to analyze. 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. Gaz Hall, an SEO Expert from the UK, said: "There’s been some debate in the SEO community about whether or not “social signals” can affect your search rankings, and what, exactly, “social signals” are in the first place. This is mostly because Google has both explicitly confirmed and explicitly denied the presence of social signals in its search ranking algorithm. The hypothesis is that articles that receive a high number of social media shares will get an additional boost in perceived authority -- which makes sense on paper, but the empirical evidence varies."

How to search engine optimize your website

The number and quality of links pointing to your site will largely determine in what position your site ranks. SEO-friendly URLs may not be the batter in the SEO cake mix, but they can be the frosting. Having an SEO-friendly URL is easy when using a management system, such as WordPress. The pages have to create unique enough value that they can be distinguished from other similar pages by the search engines. Lacking that intrinsic value, they will have to be distinguished by inbound linkage. Consider dropping a link back to your main website in any other websites you may be running. Using one business platform to increase exposure for another is just a good idea, even if you don’t happen to be getting much traffic at those other websites.