Google is trying to better understand the semantic meanings of words by looking at how they appear in knowledge bases on the web, and understanding the properties associated with them from those knowledge bases, and also looking at the words that tend to co-occur on pages that rank highly for those words as query terms. A new shift in SEO strategy, and a redefinition of its goals, will ultimately result in a stronger campaign that can withstand the changes in search algorithms. In the vast sea of websites--from e-commerce, media and informational websites to blogs and wikis--most site owners use a basic approach to search engine optimization. They submit their site to more than 200 search engines and blast these with some domains and keywords that may be related to the site. SEO closely aligns with so many marketing channels, business decisions and user behaviour that the potential your website will be 100% optimised is slim, to nil.

More about the pros and cons of link diversification

Performing regular audits on your website’s links is a good way to detect suspicious, potential negative SEO activity. Regularly monitoring of your link profile can also help you catch a possible attack early and prevent it from spiraling out of control. During the life of any website pages come and go. It’s perfectly normal to remove a page, but what can frustrate visitors is finding their journey blocked by a dead page. Worse, a page that is removed loses any importance a search engine has given it. Getting your business included in local resource lists is an indicator to Google about your authority. All you have to do is locate authoritative websites within your industry/community that also host a couple of local resources. If you have already worked to establish your business as an effective local authority, all you need to do is reach out. As visual content becomes more and more prominent, it cannot be left out of SEO. Luckily it’s not time-consuming to optimise your images.

Optimise your 404 error page

Google wants to see that you have a legitimate site with legitimate traffic. This means your content needs to be stellar. One of the biggest mistakes marketers make when redesigning websites is that they change their site architecture (create new pages to replace old ones) and do away with old website pages that they no longer want to include in their site. These “abandoned” pages might rank in search engine results pages or may have backlinks. Like any good SEO campaign, your optimization strategy should be dictated by your campaign goals. If your top level goals are straight-forward, such as increase revenue, then decide which optimization path is going to be the most effective based on your business. A handy thing to know when you are acquiring links from other sources is the difference between follow and nofollow links.

The best way to escape Google’s Penguin penalty

The search industry is constantly innovating, and it might seem overwhelming for marketers with limited time and resources to try and keep on top of developments. Users searching for your site on Google might not necessarily want to land on your homepage. It is widely understood in the industry that search engine optimization should be built in, as early as possible, to the entire site development strategy, from choosing a content management system (CMS) and planning site architecture to developing on-page content. According to SEO Consultant, Gaz Hall: "Submitting a sitemap to search engines reflecting any updates will certainly aid your cause. According to Google, a sitemap is “ a file where you can list the web pages of your site to tell Google and other search engines about the organization of your site content. Search engine web crawlers like Googlebot read this file to more intelligently crawl your site.” Don’t put off submitting your sitemap!"

There are over 1.4 billion searches conducted every hour

A great way to put people off your page is to tell them one thing with the title tag, and then not match their expectation with your main heading. Don’t keep repeating keywords through your sub-headings – use variations and natural language to describe your content. The algorithms of search engines are always changing, and many web owners have suffered from various changes that are introduced by many popular search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of generating more organic (i.e. free, natural) traffic from sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo. There’s no denying that a website’s popularity correlates with how high it ranks in search engine results, and in a way, backlinks are like popularity votes. The more links you have leading to your website from outside websites, the more traction you’ll gain from search engines.