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Keyword research is the root of every optimization project. Keywords are like an elevator pitch for your site: they summarize what you do in a few words or phrases. High authority links are great, but in my opinion, relevant links win the game every time. The way in which consumers search with be noticeably changed by digital assistants. Your website URL should generally be related to/contain your keywords. The domain name keywords are a very important ranking signal for Google, so take advantage of it if you can. *Note that this ranking factor has been made less powerful over the past couple of years, specifically for EMDs (exact match domains where only exact keywords are in the domain name). Data analysisshould be the cornerstone of your SEO efforts. Assess how customers access your site, what they do when they get there, and where the primary exit points are.

One of the most important steps when starting with SEO is to align it with your wider goals. It’s useful to set initial goals for what you want to achieve with your content to explore how to involve SEO in the process. Mobile is becoming more popular every year. Remember any additional traffic is typically good for your website ranking, so getting people to visit is the most important thing. Don't limit your ideas; brainstorm whatever subjects and phrases could lead the kinds of visitors you want to your site. Type them into a spreadsheet. Your brainstorming will "prime the keyword pump." Write good content that people not only want to read, but that they will comment on and share via social media. Share your content on your company’s social media channels and other online properties. Get creative and repurpose your content into different formats like videos, slide presentations, etc.

SEO is important whether you’re a seasoned ecommerce veteran or just starting to sell online. Optimizing your site will be a continuous process, as search engines are constantly surveying the internet to index and rank pages. Keep in mind that you must write for your readers, and not for Google’s spiders. Don’t do keyword stuffing. Long-format articles in excess of 1000 words are the prescription for getting the search engines to see your content as something trustworthy. Keyword research can be done using free tools. Stick to these good practices and you’ll be on your way to free traffic. According to Industry thought leaders, that there are numerous ways in which poor internal linking can degrade the ability of search engines to index your web pages. These include linking to pages that can’t be accessed without filling in a form and even linking to content using JavaScript or Flash.

Gaz Hall, a Freelance SEO Consultant from SEO Hull, commented: "Meta search engines are search engines that aggregate results from multiple search engines and present them to the user." But all too often, when we want to improve our site SEO, we fall prey to “quick-fixes”, just as we do when we’re enticed by fad diets. The clear majority of websites gear their SEO strategy toward traditional search engine keyword searches carried out by typing. As you’ve probably identified at this point, SEO is incredibly detailed. But, it doesn’t need to be complicated. As search engines like Google continually improve and try to show the best results they can to users, their focus is to provide quality and relevant results. Clearly, keywords are important. They always have been and they always will be. Search engines like Google want to know that a piece of content is obviously about a specific keyword.

Over the past few years, one of the most common phrases in SEO has been content is king. Quality content that is original, well written and relevant is integral for any website and business or company. The modern user has a very short attention span. If a website takes more than a few seconds to load, she/he is likely to leave. Therefore, it’s really important to make sure that site speed/load time is optimized as much as possible. 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. Keyword mapping involves hierarchically classifying the keywords pertinent to your website by intent, relevance and significance, then segmenting them still further into groups and subgroups. The aim is to reach a point where each keyword you use can be closely associated with a single, specific page on your website, which should contain content that closely matches the keyword. Content marketing is a highly viable digital marketing strategy, designed to attract and drive traffic to your website or specific landing pages

On average, the higher up page 1 the result is, the greater the number of linking domains that the webpage has. Blog comments are a great way to promote content, diversify anchor text and build out a natural link profile. When using SEO on your website, resist the temptation to include common misspellings of your keywords to increase hits. Most search engines today are smart enough to fix users’ mistakes before the search even begins, so traffic will not increase using this method. Instead, your site will appear unprofessional and untrustworthy to visitors. An important aspect of SEO is making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. 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.