There is a massive amount of content available on the internet, but none is more important to website owners and marketers than search engine results pages (SERPs). If Google decides a site no longer adheres to its quality guidelines, they may apply a site-wide penalty pushing the results down for every page. The more infractions, and the greater the seriousness of the infractions, the bigger the penalty and the further the site will drop. In other words, for Google’s website crawlers to identify your content and consequently have it displayed on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), you have to earn it. In this post, it’s all about indexing backlinks, sometimes referred to inbound leads, incoming links or hyperlinks. One of the basic tools of the trade for an SEO practitioner is the search engines themselves. They provide a rich array of commands that can be used to perform advanced research, diagnosis, and competitive analysis.

The Role of Social Media

Structured data, sometimes referred to as schema markup, are codes which are added to websites to provide search engines with in-depth information about your products, your business offering, prices of your products, location-based offerings and much more. Now's the time for any local business to raise its game. Invest time and efforts into guest blogging as well while maintaining an active blog on your site. Choose relevant, popular websites for your guest posts and embed intelligent links in your article. Initially, add one backlink per post that adds value to the content and is pertinent to the underlying theme. However, once you have developed a rapport with the host website, they might be willing to include more than one link per post. Integrate keywords, not only into the content itself, but also into the title, the meta description and even the canonical URL.

Re-think your blog’s headers

On page SEO refers to the optimization of a website’s on-page elements. This includes the way a website is structured and coded, as well as its content. As a webmaster, you have complete control over your on-page elements so putting the time into getting them right is important. Heading tags (not to be confused with the head HTML tag or HTTP headers) are used to present structure on the page to users. There are six sizes of heading tags, beginning with h1, the most important, and ending with h6, the least important. It is useful to come up with a link building strategy that will help other sources discover your content and feature it if they find it relevant enough for their target audience – without losing sight of the need to create valuable content, of course. Remember, great quality and lengthy content will work best, both for users and search engines. Studies have shown that long content consistently ranks higher than thin content. Consistency is crucial; maintain a regular publishing schedule.

Authority flows through the links on your website as well

Search engines also assess, in great detail, the technical aspects of your website. For example, how quickly the site loads plays a major role in your website ranking. Search engines also take into account how accessible your server is. Because, ultimately, Google and other search engines want to provide the best possible search results. So, the aim is to guide visitors to sites which work well, and which can always be accessed and used. Your target keywords should be in the H1 tag. Your H1 however can be different from the title tag. It doesn’t have to be – you won’t be penalised for having the same title tag and h1 tag for a web-page (after all, most CMS generate this automatically) – but varying the keyword phrasing of both can increase your chances of appearing for different search intents. Whether you purchase a separate domain (recommended) for your blog, or host it on a blogging service or a subdomain of your own site, try to ensure that your URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Links and more commonly known as backlinks to all SEO marketers are the soul of the Internet when it comes to forming a successful digital campaign. If there is a way for websites to interact with each other and gain benefits out of these transactions it is through backlinks and their version of monetary gain is earning link juice or website authority. Like the real world, the more juice or authority you have, the richer you get."

Creativity will take courage

A general rule to follow when creating your new URLs: use dashes (-) between words instead of underscores (_). Google treats dashes as separators, which means it can return results when you search for a single word that appears in a URL and when you search for a group of words that appears in a URL. In contrast, Google treats underscores as connectors, which means it will only return results when you search for a group of connected words that appears in a URL. The bottom line: using dashes creates more opportunities for your pages to be discovered. Google wants to see that you have a legitimate site with legitimate traffic. This means your content needs to be stellar. Expect increased conversions, particularly those from visitors who arrived via organic search. Whether it is writing the most useful article about a certain topic, or ensuring that your eCommerce system is easy to use, it is important to make sure site visitors have a positive experience, because only then will they stick around.