It is not known how many users out there use the Google Toolbar, but the authors believe that they number in the millions. Google can track the entire web surfing behavior of these users. To truly understand whether your SEO campaign is working, you need to learn which measurements deserve …

A title tag is used by search engines to display a page in search results and can also be found at the top of your browser. Title tags tell search engines and searchers what the page is about. As search engine algorithms adjust to accommodate the change in content, likely …

The faster your site, the more Google will favor it. There’s a very useful tool from Google itself to check your site speed: Google PageSpeed Insights. This tool gives you an overview of what aspects need improvement to boost the speed of a particular page. Helping search engines know …

Keywords are still an important part of SEO, but relevance can often be figured in more abstract ways. You can also build a reasonable idea of how many links you need, and how authoritative, in order to compete. To check out your competitors’ links, you can search for their most …

Google’s web indexing system favors recently updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Timely topics are seasonal (like holiday recipes) or more focused on current events or news coverage. Timely topics have a much shorter lifespan, but can drive large bursts of traffic if done well. If you website is …

Creating Local resources offers a plethora of link building opportunities. It is also an easy option for those businesses that don’t have a strong local presence or haven’t interacted much locally. Creating these resources is relatively easy but extreme care should be taken that only well-researched content goes …

The ability for a piece of content to earn natural links that positively contribute to a website’s link graph is directly proportional to that contents value. In other words, the more valuable the piece of content is, the easier it will be to earn high-value links and increase Google …

When people conduct research, they want up-to-date, accurate information. That’s why it’s important to keep content updated. Recency is becoming an increasingly important ranking factor in Google’s search algorithm and for good reason—your audiences don’t want to waste time reading dated content. Google needs to …

I am passionate about SEO, and digital marketing more generally, but I also understand it has its pitfalls, the main one being the complex, crowded and confusing market for SEO services. Which pages and posts are most important? These should have other pages and posts linking to them. Make sure …

Catering your search engine optimization strategy efforts only to the Google algorithm will probably lower your search results. At the same time, focusing only on the users will ignore some of Google’s page rank algorithm which will keep your page from ranking as well as it could. Do follow …

It shouldn’t be surprising that the first step is identifying those high-value search terms that your potential customers might be using. You can do that through keyword research, which can be conducted a number of different ways. Metadata is what appears on search engine result pages (SERPs) when a …

Google is getting better every day at recognizing—and rewarding—high-quality content. As defined by Google and humans, valuable content is useful, informative, better than other content on the same topic, credible, original, and engaging. While meta descriptions are not strictly a ranking signal, a good meta description can vastly …

Troubleshooting technical errors and ensuring that your website is always accessible is one of the biggest hurdles to manage when thinking about good SEO practices over time. Be careful not to focus too much on one single key phrase otherwise your site could grow repetitive, and earn a penalty. Keywords …

It used to be that buying backlinks as you could was a successful means of boosting your organic search results. But today, it’s definitely not good to buy them in big packages. Google has declared that if you buy bulk backlinks to improve your rankings, you're breaching their guidelines …

Vertical search is the term people sometimes use for specialty or niche search engines that focus on a limited data set. Examples of vertical search solutions provided by the major search engines are image, video, news, and blog searches. Ever wonder how to pick the perfect keyword topic for your …

Google has come out and said that HTTPS is a confirmed ranking factor. That said, they haven’t actually confirmed how much this impacts search rankings. There are far more unique search queries than generic ones. If you added up the search engine traffic of the most popular keywords, the …

There are issues like helping Google understand the content on your pages and website, incoming links, page authority, domain authority, usage patterns, spam factors, canonical issues and much more. Always remember that the success of link building, along with advanced strategies such as the Skyscraper technique, depends on an effective …

One of the most common problems for webmasters who run both mobile and desktop versions of a site is that the mobile version of the site appears for users on a desktop computer, or that the desktop version of the site appears when someone accesses it on a mobile device …

A search result with a high CTR can often be given a boost by Google because it’s seen as attractive and relevant. You can increase your CTR by giving your page a custom meta description. This can be done from the page’s HTML or if you’re using …

SEO strategies are most effective when implemented consistently and methodically. To begin with, you have to decide the initial goals you wish to achieve by instituting SEO. Whether you want to attract more visitors, gain more viewers for your blog, acquire new prospects or increase conversion. Don’t get fooled …

Guest posts can still be valuable from a PR/community-building perspective, but only if we approach those guest blogging opportunities with the right intentions. Always ensure that your keyword or phrase appears in the first 100 words of your page, if not the first sentence. This is more important than …

Understanding how your website visitors find you will help you determine if your SEO, marketing or networking efforts are paying off, or if you should refocus your priorities. A good trick is to dig into your Google Analytics to see the top visited pages on your site. Enter one of …