Find, target and shoot

Google and the other search engines use image-recognition software as part of their search algorithm, so they know if those pictures have been used elsewhere before. Google AdWords have a brilliant – and completely free – keyword planner which allows you to search for new keyword ideas while checking out real search volumes. If you’ve got a specific idea for a blog post in mind, use the tool well before you start writing to find a few popular and relevant keywords to include. Even if your site hasn't lost any traffic over the years, if you find a bunch of technical errors, they could be keeping you from receiving all the search engine traffic you deserve. It's very possible that spending a day fixing these problems could pay off handsomely in the long run. The search engines analyze the reading level of the web page. One popular formula for doing this is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability Formula, which considers things like the average word length and the number of words in a sentence to determine the level of education needed to be able to understand the sentence. Really good SEO is a process and it requires a detailed and well thought out plan. You cannot expect to execute quality SEO without listing out what you’re going to do, documenting yourself along the way, and executing step by step.

Use Internal Links

A website redesign presents the perfect opportunity for you to analyze your backlinks and remove the shady ones. If you use Google Webmaster Tools, you’ll see a “manual penalty” appear if Google detects one of these low-quality links. You’ll then have the option to make such links “no follows” so Google stops paying attention to them. 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 does not hold up, please share in the comments. It’s the number one thing you’ll be working on when you’re trying to improve mobile SEO: performance. In this case, performance almost entirely boils down to site speed. It’s a given: the faster your site is, the happier your users will be. As it may seem obvious by now, there is more to writing SEO-friendly content than ensuring you get a healthy ratio of keywords As you know, back in the day we could build 10,000 forum profile links with exact match anchor text and rank in a few days. Unfortunately many SEOs have not changed their game to keep up with Google changes. Now 80% of your links should be brand/URL links, 10% KW links, and the other 10% long tail/nonsense KWs. Also, if you're just starting out, build less than 50 links a day.

Don;t forget to unblock search engines from crawling your site

If you uncover duplicate content, check the organic traffic for each of your product page variations in Google Analytics. Search Engine Optimisation is the process of designing web pages, writing content and building a network of links back to your website in order to rank at the top of a google search results page. The goal is to bring your page in front of your target market. This kind of search traffic is known as 'organic' and it is the most desirable google traffic because it's FREE! (well unless you are paying a blog content writer!) Link Building is arguably one of the easiest steps to Search Engine Optimization, since links don’t really need to be written or phrased in a certain way. What is SEO? Using structured data, you can serve Google your address details in the most convenient way. SEO is all about ranking high on search indexes, which can’t happen without you creating new, quality content. As you create new pages, you create opportunities for new rankings and more reach. This, in turn, leads to more keywords you can rank for. Remember, though, that quantity should never trump quality. Better content gets you better rankings.

Add Content Expiry Headers

We asked an SEO Specialist, Gaz Hall, for his thoughts on the matter: "If you want to score the No. 1 position on Google, sit down with your teammates and brainstorm questions relevant to your brand, services or products." For those seeking to sway public (or private) opinion about a particular topic, SEO can be a powerful tool. By promoting ideas and content within the search results for queries likely to be made by those seeking information about a topic, you can influence the perception of even very large groups. Heading tags are tags that are used for the creations of headings. The most important tag is the

heading tag, and will usually be the title of a post. Heading tags have a top-down hierarchy from

to

. What value do headings have for SEO? Good formatting can instantly improve your page’s readability. This, in turn, can improve your engagement rate. Keyword research is absolutely critical to help you understand where your content can earn both short- and long-term wins while making your content more competitive in search engines.

Measuring Content Quality and User Engagement

Measuring how many visits your site gets, and analyzing the sources sending the most traffic, means you can see which content marketing and SEO strategies are getting you the best results. The key is to use SEO and content marketing together. Yes, SEO requires a lot of content, but that doesn’t mean you should pin all your hopes on that single aspect of online marketing. We want to come at this from all angles. Automatic redirects and rewrites help search engines understand when you've made changes or moved pages on your site. Inbound links pointing from other websites to your website are critical to establish the credibility of your business in Google’s eyes. With for instance the rise of voice search, longer keyphrases become more and more common. Using a long keyphrase five times in your 300-word-article will look so unnatural, that it’s not a good practice at all, where using a certain keyword five times might fit there.

Keeping Readers on the Page

Meta descriptions don’t carry as much value as they used to, but they still have an important role for SEO. Each of your posts should have a unique title and meta description. Make sure all are unique and you don’t have any duplicate ones. Remember the good old days of SEO, when all that you really needed to have “valid SEO content” was a certain number of words crossed with a certain percentage targeted keywords and punctuated by a few words linking to targeted pages? Natural, relevant links to your site from reputable websites is what takes you to the top of Google. There are many ways to go about getting your site linked. If your site uses a lot of imagery, consider adding a Pin It button to allow Pinterest users to easily add images to their boards. For sites with lots of high-quality product, inspirational or instructional images, Pinterest can be a major driver of traffic - especially given that every Pin and Repin of your image includes a link back to your site. Forget dense blocks of text with no images. Instead, create content with lots of headers, that’s well spaced out and that uses large beautiful pictures throughout. In terms of the actual writing, try to use a narrative structure where possible to really pull people in. Tell a story, use cliff hangers and make it impossible for your visitors not to move down to the next line!