Since the advent of Panda and Hummingbird, LSI is becoming increasingly important in SEO as it’s used by Google to determine between ‘keyword stuffed’ articles and genuinely relevant content. Search engines audiences are “in demand” mode and already tell you what they are looking for. This makes them a fantastic pre-qualified market to tap into. If you wish to drive revenue from new business and but find other lead generation tactics ineffective, this is a key platform to consider. If Google and the rest of the search engines trust you and they respect the content you produce, you’ll climb the search rankings. There’s no shortcut to ranking on the first few pages of the search results. Search engines don’t trust your website at first. You have to earn their trust – and it’s a slow process. If you run a small business, gaining exposure and driving traffic to your website is probably a key part of your marketing strategy. If you’ve got a brilliant website, but you’re not getting as much interest as you’d like, stepping up your SEO campaign could prove to be a game-changer.

Each and every page of your site is a gateway to the rest of the site

White hat, grey hat, and black hat are terms used to describe the type of SEO tactics used. White hat SEOs follow the guidelines of Google and other search engines. Grey hat SEOs aren’t afraid to bend the rules a bit, while black hat SEOs blatantly break the rules. The better people with relevant blogs know you (through social sites, forums, email, etc.) the more likely they’ll be to link to your site and to share your content. Influencer marketing is a great way to build a diversified traffic portfolio, because influencers have an effect on multiple traffic channels. Is your article hiding among millions of others, difficult to find and not being read as a result? If it is, you’re not alone; great research can go relatively unnoticed if it’s not highlighted and indexed in the right way. The bottom line is that if you’re focusing on a small group of generic keywords, you’re probably not being found by most of the people who are searching for you.

The best way to escape Google’s Penguin penalty

Ranking high in Google can bring you some serious traffic too. When looking at a Google results page (often referred to as Search Engine Results Page, or SERP for short), the number one result alone brings in 31% of search traffic on average. Meaning, when people search for a keyword, 31% of those searches will click the first result. Many small business owners balk at video marketing because they think that their business isn’t “video worthy”. But if lawyers and instant coffee brands can have a YouTube channel there’s no reason you can’t either. Even better than the traffic you get from video websites are the high-quality backlinks from high PageRank authority websites. When it comes to getting your website ranked highly then keywords are still an essential part of Google’s ranking algorithm, they are the very backbone of search engine (even Yahoo) after all. But keywords aren’t what they might always appear to be. Search Console shows your average position for each of the keywords you rank for and how many impressions and clicks this brings you.

The title tag is a visitor's first exposure to your site

Google has worked to smash black-hat and spam-based link-building practices, penalizing link wheels, exchanges and paid links. In 2012 the Penguin update ushered in the link building reality we experience today. With it only natural link accumulation will gain your website & webpages authority. Google normally takes into account bounce rate and the time spent on a site as ranking factors. If visitors are bouncing away due to navigation confusion and poor content structure, you can be sure that the search bots are too. Other best practices that we have in SEO are things where we will take a keyword and will essentially just make our keyword research very limited to the ones that have produced high returns. According to Gaz Hall, a UK SEO Consultant : "Create a website that people love! Search engines were created to measure different signals across the Web so they could find out which websites people like most. Play right into their hands by making those signals real and not artificial!"

What's the difference between SEO and paid Google ads?

Trust an SEO expert who will build a campaign that uses a proven process, creates original branded content and monitors relevant metrics. Many website owners neglect to spend the time analyzing how their page structure actually looks and works for the visitor. You should track the traffic, engagement, conversion rates and page visits for your mobile strategy separately than those of your desktop strategy. When creating an asset, it’s important to understand which part of the user journey you’re trying to target. Are you trying to inform and drive familiarity of your business, drive a single purchase, build loyalty, or simply become part of the consideration set? Funnel value can play an important role in not only defining the topic, but also defining the type of asset that would work best to accomplish your goal.