That old anchor text is no longer fresh anymore

SEO success relies heavily on the keywords you choose to target. If your website or webpage suddenly or gradually changes focus over time (say from a carpentry guide to a best practice SEO guide – sounds unlikely, but you never know), then anchor text pointing to you will likely change in line with the different topic. Google may then decide that your page has changed so much that the old anchor text is no longer fresh and devalue those older links. The world of search is a big one; even if you serve a niche industry, there are hundreds -- or even thousands -- of keywords and topics to choose from, and your choices could make or break your strategy. If your site is littered with lengthy, indecipherable URLs that don’t align well with the actual content of your site pages, restructuring your URLs should definitely be a priority during your next website redesign. Wondering where SEO comes into play here? While just like the searchers themselves, search engines prefer URLs that make it easy to understand what your page content is all about.

One of my firm beliefs is that Google is becoming more and more ‘human,’ and should be treated that way. This means that in all your SEO efforts, you should consider the use for us human visitors first, and then check if that aligns with any SEO recommendations. While meta descriptions arenot strictly a ranking signal, a good meta description can vastly improve click-through rate, so make sure you use it wisely! An authority website is a site that is trusted. It’s trusted by its users, trusted by industry experts, trusted by other websites and trusted by search engines. Customers today are on mobile for a large part of their digital experience. More searches today take place on mobile. Compared to desktop, mobile devices now account for 65 percent of all digital time spent. All content produced should serve the needs of customers on these devices through responsive web design, fast mobile load times, page navigation and layouts that reflect the needs of mobile users.

Dramatic growth in the interaction between offline and online marketing necessitates investment by organizations of all kinds in a successful search strategy. These days, directory links are unlikely to generate a torrent of traffic but they're a good way to build external links to your site. Additionally, links from specialized directories in your niche will bring in a steady stream of targeted visitors and help reinforce the topic of your site with Google. Contrary to popular belief, social media doesn't have a direct relationship with your search rankings. However, it can have an indirect bearing on the success of your SEO campaign. If search engines don’t know your website/webpage exists, your chance of ranking isn’t just an improbability, it’s an impossibility.

While you should not hide your heading tag in an image, you should still give search engines more opportunities to link to your website by adding keywords in the image alt text and file name. Internal linking is the process of linking one page to another on your site. This is done in a few ways including your navigation menu, sidebar links, and links inside page content to other pages on your site. Even just a few changes will have a significant impact on your website’s ranking. Don’t forget – it will still take time to see your hard work come to fruition! Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Choosing a keyword-friendly domain name is crucial to the success of your SEO campaign. Search engines will index a domain name that is also part of the page title and website description faster than a domain name that bears no relation to the title of the site or content on the site."

Relevance is a measure of how appropriate a given page is for a given query. In the early days of SEO, this ultimately boiled down to what keywords were used in a query, compared to what keywords were found on an indexed page. While it’s easy to find “experts” you may want to reach out to, it’s important to remember that not everyone responds positively to such requests. Digital marketing professionals understand the importance of SEO and the need to implement a proper strategy. However, only defining what those keywords are isn’t enough to improve your website’s search engine ranking. Your target keywords should also be in the H1 tag, but your H1 can differ from your title tag