You shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs …

Google's initial Panda update was targeted primarily at content farms - sites with a massive amount of content written purely for the purpose of ranking well in search and attracting as much traffic as possible. A call to action is a statement that asks someone to take a specific type of …

Google is becoming increasingly less tolerant of cross site duplication, i.e. For example, imagine that you have a technical product in the B2B (business to business) space. Focus on your customers, and take the right logistical steps to make sure that search engines can find your content. Focus on …

A good starting point would be to use Google Analytics to identify your top 10 ranking pieces of organic content, and see what contextual changes you can make so they remain pertinent. But be aware of making too many changes, you don't want to destroy the very thing that made …

Google Trends data can help improve forecasts of the current level of activity for a number of different economic time series, including automobile sales, home sales, and travel behavior. Other than optimized and compressed media, your website structure, code, and navigation also determine your page load speed. A strong brand …

This is even more important if you are targeting a specific keyword topic; in those cases, if you want to rank, you need to provide the information you are promising in a meaningful way. While doing a backlink audit, analyzing toxic backlinks and removing them can be a lengthy and …

I strongly believe that relevant links have a bigger impact on the algorithm. Search engine optimization has changed a lot in the past few years. Things that used to work great in the past do not work anymore. Other techniques that delivered great results in the past will get your …

If you follow the best practices for marketing your business with engaging, informative content, it can be a great way to build relationships with your customers and share real knowledge without having to pitch your products or services. Google has come out and said that HTTPS is a confirmed ranking …

Google will send people looking for information on a topic to the highest quality, relevant pages it has in its database. Individuals spend an average of 3 hours and 18 minutes per day on mobile devices. Higher perceived subjective costs associated with collecting external information decrease the likelihood that the …

Be under no illusions, advanced SEO is a full-time job. However, there are critical fundamentals that can greatly enhance your organic position and ultimately, your organic revenue. It's also important to understand that SEO is not the only way to show up on top of search engines. Think rifle, not …

A tool that is useful for keeping track of your character count is Nightbird. If your primary audience is in Australia and you are hosting your site in Los Angeles, your users in Australia will experience long network latency (slower site response times). You can get up to six sitelinks …

Looking at statistics behind applicable keywords will reveal traffic rates and competition levels, helping you better understand the terms and topics that most interest your prospects. A quality program identifies customer advocates who exhibit behavioral commitment, emotional connections with the brand, and quality communication skills. Users are especially fickle when …

Getting people to your website is great, keeping them there is better, but converting them to subscribers or buyers is the ultimate! The Internet highways are becoming more crowded by the day, and subscribers will help maintain a steady flow of traffic and help keep your brand top of mind …

There's little worse than being notified your website has spam or seeing an alert in search results that your website might have been hacked. 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 …

It's not as easy to make a site easy to crawl as you might desire. There is an immense difference between a 10-page Website and a 10,000,000-page Website. The search engine will determine how many pages it crawls and how often it crawls each page. The SEO specialist's …

Once you have identified keywords that people are using to find products or services similar to yours you need to implement them into your website. You might get caught up in creating different versions of content for your locale sites. But remember, creating remarkable and unique content should be your …

Don't be tempted by the huge numbers for broad keywords. With enough time and effort you might be able to rank for them, but you'd be battling large, established brands for unfocused visitors that might not even be ready to buy. Technically speaking, it is possible to design sites on …

They then launched Google+, which started as another copy of Facebook. That means that, even if you do appear on the second page organically, you will still only be receiving a share of the 4.8% of traffic which clicks onto the second page. Thanks to improvements in the Google …