Google has access to all this incredible data about where people go on the Internet through Chrome and through Android. Create a list of the top 10 keywords for which you want to achieve rankings. Do a search once a month on Google and see where you stand in the rankings. Keep a record of the ranking and you will be able to see the progress of your SEO efforts. Note jumps by more than five places in the ranking, because these changes are not usually due just to normal changes and search engine updates. Although you may now havea fully optimized site, your domain authority is still more than likely not at the range you want it to be at. Will your SEO consultant be changing the strategies every time that search engines introduce new components to search algorithms? To maintain a healthy website, do an overall audit of your underperforming blog content or articles to determine what to keep, what to make more robust, and what to remove.

Don’t guess your site speed problems; diagnose

SEO success relies heavily on the keywords you choose to target. All business websites are different and there is never any ‘One Size Fits All’ solution to how you should be structuring your SEO campaign or the types of SEO services you should be employing. A link from a site that has been deemed authoritative on its topic, like the Wall Street Journal, is going to give you better results than a link from a newspaper source that has been around for two months. These high-quality sites are more trust worthy to search engines and will give you more of an increase in the SERPs. There are many subtle nuances to the mechanics of semantic search, but ultimately what it means for you is that an authoritative page that dives into one specific topic in-depth will usually rank better than dozens of pages built around different keywords. Using a variety of free online tools such as Google AdWords, Keyword Keg and Bing Ads, website owners can easily find research which words are being searched for most frequently in a number of search engines.

Onpage factors matter more than with Google

So what type of website would get the highest quality ranking? According to Google, the highest quality websites have a super high-demonstrated expertise, talent, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness on the topic. Go out of your way to consistently create detailed content that brings enormous value to the end user, and you'll be on your way to dominating search. You’ve seen what links you and your competitors have. Now it is time to start building up your profile. As with any strategy, you need to set goals, and make sure it aligns with your overall marketing focus. Most SEO consults cover a local area. Google views your site as authoritative when other sites link back to it. It doesn’t want to see a site that is spammy linking back to your site. If you try and manipulate the system, you can get hit with a Google penalty and your site won't rank at all. People visit websites to find answers to their questions and you create content because you want to provide valuable information to them. In this game, you’re competing against thousands of blogs. It’s not only hard to grab your target audience’s attention but also difficult to outrank your competitors on Google.

SEO is the most important thing you can do for your website – especially if you're a small business

Gaz Hall, a Freelance SEO Consultant from SEO Hull, commented: "Google stopped showing right sidebar ads and put 4 ads above the fold (instead of 3), pushing organic results farther down." Do your maths - its one of the primary resources for this sort of thing. Its as simple as KS2 Maths. Really! You need to be placing backlinks to your site on other sites which not only have good domain authority, but you need to make sure your links are placed on high value pages on that domain as well.​ Don’t try to improve your website’s reputation by buying links or deliberately sharing links. Google has become very good at detecting these types of manipulative measures. It means that you risk falling heavily down in the rankings and it can destroy much of what you have spent time and money on creating. The bad news about SEO is that it’s not as simple as flicking a couple of switches. Nor is it a one-time deal; SEO has to be a consistent part of your ongoing marketing. There is also an overwhelming amount of information available online – how do you know where to begin? Many people fixate on "on-page SEO" in their marketing efforts. They make sure their keywords are jammed in the copy and the internal links and silos are set up correctly. For a typical WordPress site this might take an hour or two to knock out the easy stuff.

Which of your articles are most informative and valuable?

Automatic redirects and rewrites help search engines understand when you've made changes or moved pages on your site. Sometimes you might spot a particularly juicy keyword when conducting your research. But just because a keyword has high volume, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be a good one to rank for. If you are focused on a local market, it is also important to get connected with local businesses and organizations. A simple site map page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site. Analysing a competitor’s recurring backlinks will quickly give you a feel for their regular content promotion strategy, and an invaluable insight into their ‘inner circle’ of sharers/linkers.

There is no such thing as an SEO certification

There is no minimum amount of words or text to rank in Google. The entire mentality of a search engine is to provide the best possible result to the searcher that satisfies their original search query. They do this by evaluating a site’s content in reference to the search and the quality of the site and its content. As touched upon before - backlinks are simply links from other websites directing viewers to your site. Search engines love these. Good SEO consultants are hard to locate and they are even harder to hire. This is because there aren’t a lot of high-quality SEO consultants available for hire. There are lots and lots of bad SEO consultants or young entrepreneurs who think they know SEO. You should definitely include keywords in your navigation bar.