For SEO to truly work and be sustainable, it needs to include a process of build up. Any SEO consultant who says otherwise is fooling you. SEO is an ongoing effort, but one that is totally worth it. Excessive link exchange ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking will negatively impact a website’s ranking in search results. Focus on your customers, and take the right logistical steps to make sure that search engines can find your content. Focus on the ‘road less traveled’ with long-tail opportunities, and you’ll be set. SEO is not hard. It does, however take time – it involves technical tweaks on your website, competitive analysis/content strategy, and building links from around the web.

Winning at SEO is all about knowing the right tools to use for the right situations

Through its Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird updates, Google’s making it even harder for site owners and bloggers to get quality incoming links. SEO is not the techniques we use to get our sites to the top of Google. SEO is simply the objective of getting to the top of Google. Any technique you use to try and get more attention from Google could be considered SEO. There is no minimum amount of words or text to rank in Google. If you want to stay competitive, you need to protect your website for the future. Put SEO on your long-term agenda and monitor your backlink profile regularly.

Other tips and tricks that can help encourage clickthrough

Google values relevancy to the user's search more than it values pure LINK Authority. When the content answers the question of the search better than the other results (according to Google), it will rank higher if it has a decent link profile for that search result. Putting your individuality and personality across throughout the off-site SEO process (outreach emails, guest posts, social shares, etc.) makes others more likely to engage with you. Craft your unique selling proposition (USP) based on your own personality and the way you can best solve your customers’ problems. Using tools such as Copyscape will help you find if someone has plagiarised your content. If that happens, you should ask the admin to remove the part of the content from the site. If they’re not willing to do that, report them to Google. Whether you are a fresh-faced SEO newbie just starting to learn the ropes, or an SEO veteran who can recite the ins and outs of every Google update ever, SEO is a complex subject.

Blog Commenting Is More Powerful Than You Think

Google is also now looking at things like bounce rates – how long someone spends on your website. And it is looking at how your site renders on mobile and how quickly it loads. You can now get penalized for typos and mistakes. Change is the only constant you can count on in search engine optimization. Although we often say that the fundamental principles of search engine optimization don’t change, pretty much everything else does. If you want to be really, really good at this, you cannot be inflexible. You cannot afford the luxury of becoming emotionally bonded to any particular idea. Today, obtaining links is much more than just link building; it’s a part of a content marketing, strategic marketing, public relations and social media effort to get in front of the audiences that matter most. Gaz Hall, from SEO Hull, had the following to say: "Getting backlinks are important but if you get a ton of useless backlinks from irrelevant spammy sites or use “link software” then you’re doomed. In short, success in SEO marketing lies in adhering to good practice and avoiding silly mistakes."

Evaluate Your Site Speed

Internal linking is the process of linking one page to another on your site. This is done in a few ways including your navigation menu, sidebar links, and links inside page content to other pages on your site. The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Make sure the site makes good use of anchor text in its internal links. This is a free opportunity to inform users and search engines what the various pages of your site are about. Don’t abuse it, though. A search page provides you with more than one opportunity to put your name in front of the user. You should take advantage of this if you can.