A Google algorithm change was implemented in January 2012, which penalized websites with too many banner ads "above the fold" ("Top Heavy"). Any coupon, promotion, contest, social media program, or advertising campaign should yield measurable gains in sales, market share, brand awareness, customer loyalty, or other observable results to be …

Creating content on a consistent basis not only builds links internally (by linking out from your posts), but also gives you the ability to naturally attract links to your content. A blog is essential to many strategies I list below, such as linking out. User signals are behavioral patterns of …

Even if you have a site already, it is vital to invest significant time and energy on keyword research before starting your SEO campaign. Internal backlinks are created on your site or blog and there's no external element in their creation. The reason behind the creation of internal links it …

Webpages with content that is too long can also negatively affect you and your rankings. Web server log analysis and web analytics are part of SEO monitoring. It seems the world is going mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis, and a large user base searching …

The canonicalization method is preferred, just in case a link to a "review page" occurs on an external website, which will pass the link equity to the product page. That's really easy, easy answer: it's Google! Many emotions can be connected to products, including trust, reliability, friendship, happiness, security, glamour …

This research process is very similar to competitor analysis, only this time your focus is solely on the site you are assigned to work with. It can also affect the search engine index freshness of your pages. Websites that are popular and have a lot of links shared on social …

These are all very important questions to ask yourself when assessing the homepage and website overall. Evergreen content basically means well-written content about topics that do not go out of date-or at least, not easily. Deceiving users with innaccurate descriptions is a sure-fire way to lower your ranking. As you …

Google's SEO Starter Guide states that, "If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would." In other words, including keywords - or at least clear and direct information - in your URL is a best …

How the pages on your site are organized and structured affects your search engine rankings. It also affects your it's user experience (UX). Basically, you want to make it easy for actual visitors and search engines to find stuff in your store. Search behavior is always changing, so search engine …

You need to see things from your customers' point of view and, more importantly, you need to write the things that appeal to their viewpoint. Many quality open source software packages are worth exploring. Search engines pay attention to how long a user stays on your website and the pages …

Users will search for simple keywords and you possessing the right ones, could make-or-break your strategy. Seeing that articles with photos, infographics, and other visuals get up to 94% more views, it's safe to say that not including visuals is a colossal mistake. Shared hosting comes in many variations. Keyword …

Make sure you understand the acceptable performance baselines, the scheduled maintenance times, and the change request methodology (if any). High-quality content on and off your website and using strategic link-building tactics (internal links and backlinks) is a critical component to achieving relevancy. This strategy protects the website's viability against the …

The intent of web users searching on their mobile devices will be different from the intent of those searching the web on their desktop. The same SERP principle applies. Most mobile web browsers are looking for something fast, such as where to get something, directions to a place, how to …

Keyword stuffing occurs when too many variations of the same phrase are shoehorned to fit into important ranking factors, such as URLs, meta titles and descriptions, image alt text and body copy. This practice can significantly impair the user experience as the website is sculpted solely for search engines and …

Google is getting better and better at recognizing content that truly is useful to people. Sometimes an in-house approach may not be the best choice simply because no in-house expertise is available. and note the subtle differences. Google can detect well-written content, and can detect poor quality content, or unoriginal …

As a general rule of thumb the more words in the query the easier it is to rank for that phrase. This is certainly not an absolute but has been the case for a majority of the terms I have worked with. *If you know of examples where this theory …